Publications

55 Things Learned at 55: My Journey Through Work-related PTSD

By the time you’ve turned fifty-five, you’ve lived a lot of life, had made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot of lessons. Philip Habacon knows that perhaps better than anyone:

he’s been a young hellraiser growing up in the Philippines, a diving instructor in Thailand, a paramedic after immigrating to Canada, and a hunter in the cold Manitoba wilderness. From these rich experiences, he offers fifty-five stories ranging from hilarious to heartbreaking, each with an essential life lesson.

An unflinching voice with an extensive range, Habacon delights with narratives of his exciting adventures and enlightens with his portrayal of the harrowing reality of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) facing Canadian first responders, and his uphill journey of mending his mental health and relationships. Honest and unforgettable, 55 Things Learned at 55 is an essential read for all students of life.

A Fable of Wood and String

Would it hurt you to just do as you’re told? The O’Connell siblings live in the shadow of their parent’s past, held back by obligation to keep the people of Stagmil safe when their father has to lead the non-hunters of their village to drive off a wyvern. Lily doesn’t trust the stranger who calls herself Madeline when she staggers into the pastoral lands. The puppeteer seems to take an interest in Lily’s talent with the family mandolin, and she teaches Lily new music. Lily’s had songs stuck in her head before, but nothing like this. Twins Seth and Tiffany however can’t wait for their father to return so they can get on with the shearing. Seth should at least be helping hunt the wyvern, and Tiffany wants to take her best friend Molly and head to the nearest city and see the world. The twins and several other villagers are lured by song into the woods and transformed into marionettes: Seth breaking free before he can be strung, and Lily tainted in a way she doesn’t understand. They have the skills to track the woman down, but to restore Seth to his body, and rescue Tiffany and the others? Tracking the woman takes them far from the familiar woodlands they know, across the sea to an enchanted castle, where in an effort to rescue their sister they’ll learn something much more sinister than turning folk into puppets is going on. They’ll get help, of course, but not from who they expected. After all, last Seth checked, foxes are only supposed to have the one tail.

A Natural Cause

Away from family and friends for the first time after moving to Vancouver to attend university, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth (Liz) Grant finds campus and dorm life lonely. She is thrilled when the handsome, charismatic Professor Gilby offers her and Caroline, another student, a summer job doing door-to-door surveys to collect data for his research on elderly people who live alone and their access to medical care. Before long, Liz is using cocaine and embroiled in steamy and complicated sexual relationships with both Gilby and Caroline—who may or may not also be involved with each other.

Years later, while leading a quiet life as a civil servant working with archival material, Liz (who now calls herself Beth), makes a shocking discovery about the real purpose of the data she was innocently collecting all those years ago and that money—big money—was involved. After turning her findings over to the local RCMP detachment, she finds herself drawn into a complex web of crime and police sleuthing she could never have imagined. She also learns that her relationship with Gilby and Caroline was not quite what it seemed. Or was it exactly what it seemed?

A Seven Year Ache

Rosie Kelvey is a spirited and willful prairie woman of the early twentieth century whose ache to pursue her own desires goes against the harsh and limiting moral landscape of her time. She has what the neighbours teasingly call “two men on her hook”: an older, passive husband and a virile, young lover. But life is perilous for those who are poor and female and, undeterred by the misfortunes that befall her wayward sisters, Rosie is inexorably drawn to an all-consuming flame.

Through Rosie’s eyes and in her fresh, lusty voice, Fisher Lavell explores themes of poverty, loss, and upheaval. Based closely on the hardscrabble lives of the author’s errant aunties, A Seven Year Ache paints their tragedies, heartaches, and passions on a large and vibrant Prairie canvas.

A Viking Legend: The Descendants of Odin

This manuscript is a retelling of a mythological legend with information from The Edda, by Snorri Sturluson, edited and translated by Anthony Faulkes, from the Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Jesse Byock, from the poems of The Poetic Edda, unknown author/s, as translated by Carolyne Larrington, from the Saga of the Volsungs, unknown author/s, as translated by Jesse L. Byock, from “The Tale of Ragnar Lothbrok,” sourced from Adam Bremen and the Saxo Grammaticus, The Saga of the Volsungs and the Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, as translated by Jackson Crawford, from “The Fostering of Aslaug” by William Morris, a translation from “The Lay of Kraka,” and other sources. The original poems and stories are believed to have been memorized, sung, chanted, bantered, and recited in the Old Norse and Old Icelandic languages. The oral tradition of storytelling was practiced by the Nordic and Germanic tribes, including the Burgundians, Huns and Goths. As the nomadic families travelled and migrated, they took their stories, poems, and songs with them. For migrating Scandinavians, these stories, songs, and poems became a strong link that connected them to their past and to their homelands and were shared from descendant to descendant. After the migrating families had settled and lived in Iceland for a few hundred years, unknown scribes documented some of these stories, songs and poems onto vellum skins. With imagination and foresight, the author has woven together tales from the different sources, creating a story about a family dynasty, whose patriarch is Odin, the chief of the Old Norse Gods. In, “A Viking Legend: The Descendants of Odin,” Odin marries a human woman, named Katrin, and the stories of their descendants unfold throughout six generations of this family line, also known as the Wulfings, or the wolf clan. The ebook is available on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. A paperback copy is available at Amazon, the Icelandic Heritage Museum in Gimli, and McNally Robinson in Winnipeg.

Agency

Children are lost in a maze – a maze of child welfare that has persisted for over a century. We are introduced to Jazz, an adoptee from Korea, Claire, a 60s scoop adoptee, and Louisa, a 1910s British Home Child. Together, they seek a way out of the maze while uncovering memories of their past.

“Agency” is a 70-minute exposé written by local playwright Barb Janes. Initially, it was a 5minute script created for Sarasvati’s Femfest Bakeoff in 2019, earning Barb first place in the competition. Over the years, with the encouragement of Director Marsha Knight, the play developed into a 70-minute production.

Alex in Wanderland

Thrust into an alternate world, a married couple finds themselves as saviors of the land, with subtle hints of a slow and painful death as their ultimate reward. Alex and Alexis find themselves on a not-so typical quest to fulfill a ridiculous ancient prophecy. Their travelling companions: the priest, the protector, and the thief, are suspect, and everyone else seems out to stop them from reaching their ultimate goal.

And Then Is Heard No More

Opening night of the season at Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Centre is a glittering event on the city’s arts calendar, and this October, there is real drama happening offstage. Gerald Blaise, the company’s well-loved Artistic Director has failed to show up. Gerald’s car is found the following day, north of the city, when a couple of dogs take a keen interest in the bloody contents of the trunk. Since Gerald’s remains have been discovered outside the city limits, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway of the RCMP finds herself investigating the death.

PTC’s next play up is to be Shakespeare’s Macbeth, an unlucky play according to theatrical tradition. That rings true, for the staff, cast and crew as well as Roxanne. When a second body is found, this time in a city park, Roxanne finds herself having to work alongside the cynical Detective Sergeant Cooper Jenkins of the Winnipeg’s Police Services.

Theatre is a different world with its own jargon, where fact and fiction merge, lies are delivered as truth, and where people with active imaginations conjure up convincing stories. Who is Roxanne supposed to believe?

And We Shall Have Snow

• Shortlisted for the 2021 CWC Best Crime First Novel Award
• Finalist for the 2021 WILLA Literary Award for Original Softcover Fiction

New to the RCMP’s Major Crimes Unit, Corporal Roxanne Calloway is keen to make her mark. She’s young and ambitious. But when she’s called from the big city to tiny Cullen Village to lead the investigation into the death of the talented but devious star of the local music scene—discovered frozen and dismembered at the local dump—she finds much to contend with. The close-knit community does not give up its secrets willingly. Barely has she begun her investigation when another very dead, very frozen body disturbs the rural peace.

In the summer Cullen Village is filled with cottagers and day-trippers who flock to the lakeshore’s tranquil beaches. But when the temperatures drop the tourists disappear and the year-round residents settle in for months of bitter cold. The local book club likes to cozy up with good food and good friends—and, of course, good books.

But not this winter.

As the wind bowls and the snow deepens, the book club—and the village—are riven by suspicion and rumour. Can there be a serial killer in their midst? As tensions mount, Corporal Calloway scrambles to make sense of an ever more perplexing set of clues—before someone kills again.

Better Dead Than Bred

Better Dead Than Bred, the rallying cry of rogue activists from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) erupted loudly in Vallejo, California, in 2018. Bursting into a major dog competition, these activists caused the death of many pure-bred show dogs by releasing the animals and shooing them outside onto a nearby highway. Also, in searing heat, they unplugged the electricity to their owners’ motorhomes, killing the air conditioning and, consequently, killing the show dogs sheltering inside. “Better dead than bred!” they yelled. It was disgusting. It was horrible. It was riveting.

The movement’s existence and raison d’être raise some massive questions, tackled here in this tale of a decent man lured into hell by an animal rights activist who believes he’s the devil and that his life’s purpose is to tempt good people into evil. Sean Bergmann is a retired engineer, happily married and living a comfortably insulated life with his two beloved shelties, Opi and Echo, whom he trains to compete in dog shows.

But just as Opi enters the ring for the Best in Show contest, Sean Bergmann’s ordinary life collides with a force that is distinctly out of the ordinary. Cooper Newsome and three of his activist acolytes invade the show, open crates, and scatter the precious dogs. In the process, Opi is killed and Echo goes missing. Cooper leaves his business card, inscribed with the words “Better Dead Than Bred.” Sean vows revenge at whatever cost.

This story follows both the revenge and its cost, including Sean’s involvement with Cooper’s organization so he might spy on the activists until he’s learned enough to cause them meaningful damage. But he loses his identity and ethical core along the way, eventually even participating in the theft of puppies to be sold to a dog fight organizer.

Sean achieves retribution at last in this battle for animal rights and his soul in the form of a furious conflagration that wipes out the bad guys . . . or does it?

Breaking Point

Broken Stone

Mama is dead, Baby Emil is dead and Stalin’s new rules are breaking up the family. Papa must stay behind and hide as 12-year-old Katya and her three younger siblings find their way to freedom in East Prussia. With Mama’s sister, Aunt Helena, they board a train and flee for a new home with an aunt and uncle they’ve never met-relatives who don’t want them. But when they reach the border, soldiers won’t let Aunt Helena cross. That forces Katya to take responsibility for her siblings. What will life hold for Katya, her two sisters and her brother when they arrive in East Prussia? How long before Papa can rescue them? Gabriele Goldstone inherited scattered bits of her mother’s memories, shadowed by the oppression of both Stalin and Hitler. She shaped them into the life of the fictional character Katya Halter. Gabriele travelled to Ukraine and searched through former KGB files to find missing pieces-along with the red stone that symbolizes Katya’s home. Gabriele lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Calabritto

Calabritto is a novel about a mountain village in central Italy taking place in the early 1970’s and the eccentric characters that weave their stories in and around each other. From the beautiful, innocent relationship of 11 year olds Guglielmo and Antonella as they experience love for the 1st time, to the adult complications of sex and romance surrounded by the changing tides, Calabritto weaves its magic around beauty, loss, and betrayal. Written in Tony Nesca’s classic free-flow, stream of consciousness, the prose itself mesmerizes and captivates, drawing the reader into a tragi-comedy that unfolds an intricate tapestry of human experience. A work of beauty.

Cattail Skyline

Joanne Epp’s second poetry collection “celebrates the tiny marvels and shifting layers of the Prairie landscape.” As a meditation on nature and place, it offers close-ups on particular landscapes – Omand’s Creek in Winnipeg; Star Lake in the boreal forest; a certain stretch of prairie road. By discovering a place for the first time, or finding the new within the familiar, or revisiting once-familiar places after many years, Epp questions how we know a place, how our perception of it changes, and what is impossible to know.

Chapel on the Moor (The Odds Bodkin Mysteries Book 2)

Instead of the secretly planned mulled wine and mince pies for their coffee stop, a group of local ramblers discovers a severed arm in the ruins of a Dartmoor chapel. Within a few hours, five more body parts are discovered on well known Dartmoor sites. In this second volume in the Odds Bodkin’s Mystery Series, DI Bodkin once again uncovers hidden secrets in the Devon village of Coombe Gilbert, revealing a paedophile ring stretching across three generations.

Children of the Bloodlands: The Realms of Ancient, Book 2

Three months after the battle of Zabor, the five friends that came together to defeat her have been separated. Burdened with the Calamity Stone she acquired in Scion of the Fox, Roan has gone to Scotland to retrace her grandmother’s steps in an attempt to stop further evil from entering the world.

Meanwhile, a wicked monster called Seela has risen from the ashy Bloodlands and is wreaking havoc on the world while children in Edinburgh are afflicted by a strange plague; Eli travels to Seoul to face judgment and is nearly murdered; Natti endures a taxing journey with two polar bears; Phae tries desperately to obtain the key to the Underworld; and Barton joins a Family-wide coalition as the last defense against an enemy that will stop at nothing to undo Ancient’s influence on Earth — before there is no longer an Earth to fight for.

Darkness, death, and the ancient powers that shape the world will collide as our heroes discover that some children collapse under their dark inheritance, and those who don’t are haunted by blood.

Crow Stone

It is January 1945, the last winter of the Second World War, and East Prussian civilians flee as the feared Red Army invades Germany in the wake of the impending Nazi defeat. Katya and her two sisters join thousands of others trudging to the Baltic Sea in the hope of escaping imprisonment.

But in a raid on a night-time hiding place, Katya is separated from her sisters and forced to take a long and shameful journey back into the Soviet Union, a country she fled as a child when her home was destroyed. Captured and imprisoned by the Russians, she is forced to endure hunger, back-breaking work and filthy conditions labouring in a mine deep in the Ural Mountains. But Crow Stone is also a story of friendship and the small acts of mercy that help Katya survive her ordeal. The novel is inspired by Gabriele Goldstone’s mother’s powerful memories of more than two years in a Soviet forced labour camp. A remarkably contemporary tale of invasion and the plight of refugees.

Dancer: A Haunted MLT Charity Anthology for Ukraine’s Children

Step into the shadows with “Dancer,” a spine-chilling anthology that pirouettes between horror and hope. Curated by the visionary Jim Phoenix, this collection brings together master storytellers in a dance of darkness that will leave you breathless.

Inside, you’ll discover:
• 15 original tales that push the boundaries of horror
• A journey from cosmic terrors to monsters lurking in your backyard
• Stories that explore resilience in the face of both supernatural and human horrors

But “Dancer” is more than just a thrilling read—it’s a beacon of hope. Every purchase directly supports Ukrainian children affected by conflict, offering them a lifeline in their darkest hour.

From Sarah Das Gupta’s chilling “The Beast” to Kody Greene’s mind-bending “The Hunger Between the Stars,” each story in “Dancer” will:
• Send shivers down your spine
• Challenge your perception of reality
• Remind you of the power of the human spirit

Don’t just read—make a difference. Add “Dancer” to your cart now and join the dance between darkness and light. Your purchase could change a child’s life forever.

Dark Candle

A party at the home of a respectable socialite sets in motion a sequence of events which lead a group of reluctant companions on a quest for King Arthur’s tomb.

Martin Owen is a mild mannered accountant, ignored and disrespected, even by his own family. But an experiment in hypnotic regression wakens a mysterious long dormant spirit from the time of Arthur. Intrigued, the party’s guests are drawn in further slowly forming an impromptu team on the trail of buried Roman treasure and the forbidden secrets of Camelot.

Each interrogation of the sleeping spirit, leaves it encroaching further and further upon Martin’s life, until we are unsure who is controlling who. Meanwhile, the romances, ambitions, illicit affairs and secrets of each of the party members are exposed as the shadow from the past inexorably leads them to glory or doom.

Death at the Point

Some see outsized beauty where others only see bleakness, like the sweeping landscape of Hecla Island, situated two hours north of Winnipeg, Canada. Death at the Point is largely set in this real-life area with Icelandic roots that originally lured Henry Trevellyn and his wife Julia to its rocky shores as a weekend respite. Originally an emigre from London and now a retired member of the Winnipeg Police Service’s Major Crimes Unit, he alternates his time between, volunteering in Winnipeg and relaxing in the unspoilt tranquility of island life. He finds himself longing to spend more time at the couple’s cottage on Hecla, kayaking its lonely shores and wandering its lush forest trails with his Labrador retriever, Skip.

When a tall red-headed stranger appears on the island and soon after a body is found, Henry’s unyielding curiosity and investigative skills kick back into gear. Both the close-knit community and the solitude Henry has come to enjoy has been shattered. The Trevellyn’s once care-free days become mired in mystery and danger as Henry becomes consumed by a series of unsolved crimes that lead him to discover the island’s dark past.

Del Ryder and the Crystal Seed

Darkness is spreading across mystic Azdia. Soon, all of life will stop glowing with light. Soon, the trees will no longer spring to life. Even the mighty feldroes will cease to roam the forests. Already, many lumens, the shape-shifting caretakers of Azdia, have lost faith in their provider and protector, the mysterious Mr. Thicket. The only hope for the creatures of Azdia are the awaited chosen ones sent from another world called Earth.

Del Ryder and the Emerald Sceptre

The Lumens have always been the caretakers of mystic a place where plants, trees and water glow with an inner light, and where strange and wonderful creatures live. But the red-glowing lumen Crimson longs for more than just taking care of things. He wants adventure! Becoming a member of Captain Hollow’s crew seems like a dream come true, but it might be more than Crimson bargained for. With the discovery of a mysterious symbol in a forgotten notebook, they set off to find the one they believe can give them the answer to keeping a growing darkness at bay. If they fail, all the light of Azdia could be wiped out.The Adventures of Crimson and Hollow is the prequel to the Del Ryder Series.

Del Ryder and the Rescue of Eleanor

Del Ryder and her best friend, Sam, need help if they are going to face off against the forces of darkness. Their best hope lies with Eleanor, who, in a different age, brought hope and light to the land of Azdia. When Eleanor is captured, Del defies the odds and sets off on a rescue mission which takes them to the brink of disaster. Will Del be able to free Eleanor before the mysterious Heir of Mordlum corrupts not only the entire realm, but also Del’s best friends?

Down Came The Rain

After a dangerous incident, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway has left the RCMP’s Major Crimes Unit and is now working as the Team Commander of the Fiskar Bay detachment. Roxanne is adjusting to her new job when the body of retired Sergeant Bill Gilchrist, her predecessor, is discovered in a ditch at the side of the road. Spring in Fiskar Bay often means flooding as the normally peaceful stream–home to ducks and teals and the occasional blue heron during the warmer months–fills to the top of its banks with fast-moving, murky brown water, sweeping chunks of ice and broken tree branches along with it. The locals from the close-knit community show up in droves to help sandbag and Roxanne organizes the local RCMP to help with the effort. But when another RCMP officer is found dead, tensions begin to rise as quickly as the water levels. Roxanne moved to Fiskar Bay to keep herself out of harm’s way, but with a cop killer on the loose, she isn’t sure who she can trust. Can Roxanne find the killer before it’s too late?

Eigenheim

Home is like “a memory of a lost photograph,” elusive but vivid. A place of tenuous security, “one claw on the screen” can threaten the entire structure. Joanne Epp, in her first collection of poetry, Eigenheim, shapes and reshapes the peculiar characteristics of one’s own idea of home.

Without defining the precise dimensions, there is room enough to house the essentials. Examining death and birth, loss and love, deep searching and unquenchable longing, Epp reaches back to her rural Mennonite roots while restlessly exploring what lies just beyond the sun’s reach.

Expeditions to Earth (Of Destiny’s Daughters Book 3)

Can Lucky Lucy convince Earth’s strong-arm government that joining with the aliens is the only way to save themselves?

Lucy Thorncroft finds herself hurtling back toward her home planet Earth, with a raucous shipload of old friends, and serious dangers, old and new, waiting to greet her.

Fall of a Sparrow

Fatherhood for Fuckheads

Behold, Fuckhead, what you have become:

A FATHER.

A DAD.

But what’s that noise? To whom do you speak at night and who’s that devil telling you about that lady over who’s got a hell of an rump on her? Don’t forget about those boobs of hers and how they deliciously joggle as she shifts; don’t forget about those beers in the fridge, how cold they are and how they’ll make you tingle from your head down to your tootsies.

His name is Ken, and he is loud, and he is you, and you must kill him so your family might thrive.

Will you survive?

Fields of Light and Stone

You lie awake, needlessly fingering this patchwork guilt. Remorse, a code you live by; distress calls for someone to blame. —from “Threads” Following the deaths of her Mennonite grandparents, Angeline Schellenberg began exploring their influence on her life. Her elegiac love letter to them articulates her grief against the backdrop of their involuntary emigration. She artfully captures the immigrant identity, vital to Canadian culture, in poems that draw on events both personal and global: war and famine, dementia and cancer, hidden sacrifice and secrets. Her poems captivate with themes of ancestry, memory, resilience, and forgiveness. Fields of Light and Stone is a reflection on how family history shapes and moves us.

Following Sea

Spanning almost two hundred years, Following Sea finds anchor in the submerged regions of the heart. With great care, Lauren Carter wades into family histories and geography, all the while charting her own territories. Carried by the ebb and flow of language, Carter’s second collection explores issues of infertility, identity, and settler migration, offering a tender examination of home. Urgent and intimate, Following Sea leads us along the shoreline of Carter’s Manitoulin memories to show us what she has carried up from the depths.

Gajarah

With stunning lyricism, Gajarah tells the story of a fearless woman torn between two worlds—Pakistan and Canada— whose life is upended by sexual violence. Emahn is big-haired, mischievous, and larger than life. Born in the Arabian Gulf, she spends extended summers with her grandparents, aunties, and cousins on the rooftops of Lahore. But tucked away beneath her spirited exterior, Emahn carries the weight of childhood trauma. When she marries and moves to Canada, she quickly learns the art of navigating multiple realities, and compartmentalizing memories of the world she left behind, even as she clings to the stories of her home. She is resilient, she is driven, she is unbreakable. Almost. When tragedy strikes, Emahn must draw upon the deepest wells of her ancestral strength to survive, even if it means revisiting her gutting past. Braided together with prose, poetry, and mythical parables, Gajarah confronts the realities of forgiveness and justice, and asks what it means to belong to a land that so forcefully pushes one away.

Garbage Boy – The High Bar of Low Expectations

Who would have thought picking up garbage would be the road to redemption, never mind riches? Garbage Boy’s lot in life improves until it doesn’t as he is thrown into a cocktail of chaos involving drugs, motorcycle gangs and an eclectic collection of friends.

Garden Grove

Garden Grove Meadows, “Where families come to live.” A new housing development promises a better future in a growing bedroom community. A project that seems to be the eye of a storm of strange events. Plagued with vandalism, the work crew poisoned, altered blueprints, and human remains intentionally planted for the crew to find.

Who is trying to stop the development?

Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures

What haunts our hearts today may haunt us in the hereafter . . .

With stories spanning time, galaxies, and spirits, Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures features 17 original stories, casting the indelible themes of gothic romance forward in time, to imagined futures and tomorrow’s afterlives.

Grandmother, Laughing

Until she met Obrum Kehler, serious Sarah Sudermann had never laughed. Her mother said she always reached for the black things first. As a young girl, she was haunted by a vision of her grandmother bolt upright in her black trough coffin, laughing so hard her bonnet slipped off to the side and hung from one ear. But then Obrum looked at her with his Robin’s egg eyes and red paint on his nose.

And then there was the lawnswing . . . and the piano. Not practical. Not necessary. Especially for a young couple struggling through the Great Depression. When Beethoven Blatz enters to tune their piano everything is in place for the Kehler family to make great music together.

Full of love, longing, and tenderness, Grandmother Laughing is a story about unconventional families and the lengths we will go to find fulfillment for ourselves and the ones we cherish.

Hammer Across the Stars (Of Destiny’s Daughters Book 2)

Lucky Lucy searches for adventure and maybe romance (?) across the vastness of space.

After leaving Earth to join the Rygeillian Navy and see the universe, Lucy Thorncroft finds herself hurtling from one adventure to another. Not much chance she’d ever settle down and miss out on spaceships, alien monsters, evil empires and exotic planets?

He Goes by A.J.

“He Goes by A.J.” is a journey of the human resilience of a forgotten soul who withstands gut-wrenching heartbreaks, which are also accompanied by uplifting second chances.

He Goes by A.J. is a powerful story of resilience, redemption, and the relentless pursuit of hope. A.J. is a man the world has overlooked—shaped by heartbreak, defined by loss, yet unwilling to surrender to despair. When life slams every door shut, he refuses to be locked out, finding his way forward through sheer will and quiet defiance. With each painful setback comes an unexpected second chance, leading him to rediscover what hope looks, tastes, and feels like.

Hiding Scars

Winnipeg 1913. Something happened to Marko Gobinski’s wife and daughter. Something horrible. The Ukrainian arrives in Winnipeg hoping to start a new life. But how can he when his past continues to haunt him? Mildred Spencer was beautiful, but not anymore. At least not since the horrible accident that left her with a grotesque scar on her face. Filled with self-doubt and apprehension in a society that doesn’t hold much regard for women, much less damaged ones, will she ever find true companionship?

House of Refuge

Hunting Michael Underwood (McAllister Series Book 3)

Step deeper into the twisted mind of a serial killer as he slips further into madness in this disturbing psychological thriller.

Hunting Michael Underwood follows on the heels of book one, Where the Bodies Are, bringing the first two stories and their characters together as the search for the killer continues.

Michael Underwood has vanished and everyone is searching for him. Detective Jim McNelly is determined to not stop until he finds him. Working with the detective, Lawrence Hawkworth is still chasing the bigger story he knows is behind the bodies. Jason McAllister knows he must stop the killer he created before he goes too far. He may be the only one who can stop him.

Unable to let go of his barely remembered past and the search for his sister, the killer goes looking for Jason McAllister’s past and his family.

Inviting Wonder

Rekindling the relationship between churches and the arts, calling churches to embrace hospitality as a spiritual practice, re-imagine the church as a public space, and inflame religious imagination through the arts.

It is 7 am in the Cardiac ward

It is 7 a.m. in the Cardiac Ward is both a gripping narrative and an instructive guide to understanding the importance of empathy for medical professionals and patients alike. Recounting his own prolonged illness and time spent in the hospital, author Dr. Kamal Malaker shifts his perspective from an experienced andhighly regarded oncologist to that of a patient, thereby shedding light (through his detailed and evocative first-person narrative) on the schisms of difference between how doctors view the painand illness of patients and how patients view their own condition. Presenting the patient-doctor relationship through the lens of his own experience of having been both, Dr. Malaker teaches the need for empathy— not just simply understanding— in the medical field, sharing biographical events and encounters that shaped his own thinking.

Killing David McAllister

Everyone wants to kill David McAllister in this explosive conclusion.Sometimes the only way to stop a monster is to kill it. He has gone by many names, but he was raised as David McAllister, and finding what he is looking for is not enough to quiet the darkness inside him.David McAllister must die.While the McAllisters move into hiding, Detective Jim McNelly and his reporter friend, Lawrence Hawkworth, continue to pursue them. Jim and Lawrence split up to follow their own leads, routes that will take them each on their own path to discover secrets behind the McAllisters.Anderson and William are trying to keep the group together and ahead of the detective hunting them while trying to resolve the issue of what to do with David, Kathy, Rose Bheals, and the boy Jason brought, Billy.Kathy is becoming increasingly fearful both for and of David and wants out, but feels trapped. She is certain death is the only way out.Cassie swore to kill David for what he did to Connie and the others. Torn by memories she does not have and the knowledge of the dark hole this life will bury her in, she needs to escape.Sophie has been ordered to kill David and Kathy. She may have to kill her own brother, Jason, too. When the time comes, she’s not sure if she can do it.With Marjory’s lapses into the foggy confusion of Alzheimer’s, nobody believes her when she really needs them to, when Sophie’s little girl’s life is at stake.David is slipping further into madness and, convinced she is the little sister he lost so many years ago, he is going to take little Lauren with him. Having his now adult real sister, Cassie, there is no help.Will someone reach David and Lauren in time as the blackness closes in and rage takes over?

Knight’s Bridge

A bloodied knight fleeing a lost cause rescues a woman escaping from the madness of a burning countryside and guides her and her daughters to temporary safety. An angry warlord is dispatched to seize a bridge but decides first to divert and ravage a small town. A young squire, following his master into his first battle, has numerous fears and uncertainties to overcome. Each have a story to tell and they all meet together in the clash around the Pax Regis, the King’s Peace, a magnificent stone bridge over the Matriarch, the Mother of Waters.

A tale of brutal warfare, adventure and romance, with the destiny of a kingdom at stake, the lives of the four main characters hang in the balance, yet the widow Eodithe of West Riverside still hopes for a normal life, for herself and her two young daughters, if they can survive.

Krampus is My Boyfriend! Volume 1 Graphic Novel

Krampus is My Boyfriend! is a fantastical, comedic slice-of-life story, dealing with the hard feelings of being a teenager in the modern Canadian prairies. It won the 2020 Aurora Award for Best Graphic Novel, and was nominated for the 2020 Joe Shuster Award for Best Webcomic.

Light Lingers: A Collection of Haiku

In Light Lingers: A Collection of Haiku (2025), Cendrine Marrouat invites the reader to appreciate the simple, yet profound ways the little things shape our experiences, reminding us of the beauty found in the present. Foreword by Poet and Writer Sherri J Moye-Dombrosky.

Lilah

Journalist, Nick Hendricks, is coasting on auto-pilot with his career, his relationships, and his life. All that changes one snowy night when the beautiful and mysterious Lilah arrives in Silver Narrows. Soon they’re caught up in a passionate relationship, and Nick’s career is recharged when Lilah urges him to investigate a string of unsolved disappearances from the town’s past. But he discovers that things aren’t so perfect in this small Minnesota town and there are guilty secrets lurking beneath its cozy exterior. Secrets some of the town’s long-standing citizens want to keep buried. Nick’s investigation sets off a string of disturbing and violent events that stir up painful memories from his own past. Nick soon realizes Lilah has secrets too, and he can’t help wondering where she came from, and how she’s connected to the unexplained disappearances of four teenagers, but he’s unprepared for the shocking discoveries he makes about the town he thought he knew, his own past and ultimately about Lilah.

Long Stories Shortened

Long Stories Shortened is a collection of short stories and vignettes; largely about growing up in South Winnipeg in the 1960s and 1970s, but also the author’s escapades as a kid and teenager, and his life as a communications professional, photographer, husband, father, and musician. Long ago memories are brought to life with poignancy, humour, insight and charm!

Lucid

Charlotte Marin leads an outwardly conventional life. She lives in a comfortable suburban neighbourhood, has a caring and devoted boyfriend, and a job she enjoys at a local airline. No one would suspect that Charlotte has been hiding a web of lies and secrets that are in danger of coming undone. Following a tragic death, Charlotte develops a dangerous coping mechanism for her grief. She seems to have her dark ritual under control until she meets Abel Moretti on a flight to Seattle. Plagued with chilling lucid dreams that worsen as her situation and wellbeing deteriorates, she’s faced with a tough decision and left wondering if she’ll ever wake up from this nightmare.

Manitoba MAID

Death is universal. Dying is personal. Aurelia knows death. Her father died when she was born. Her grandmother-mother died, with Aurelia’s help, when Aurelia turned 21. That same day, she fled the Long Plain Reserve and settled in Winnipeg. Now 75, she faces three crises: a diagnosis of aggressive lung cancer, eviction from her home of 54 years, and arrest for the murder of her best friend. Desperate, Aurelia locates one of twelve half-siblings she has never met. She makes three requests: help her arrange for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID); bring their brothers and sisters together the night of her death; and write her life story. Manitoba MAID tells that story.

Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings From the Land of Water

A rich, colourful, and diverse collection of works by Indigenous writers that together tell the story of Manitowapow, also known as Manitoba.

Menace From the Past

Mudwater Mutters

“The media literacy companion for The Stinkwater Escapee.”

Muunokhoi’s Awakening

The story is about Muunokhoi, a marmot in Mongolia who wakes prematurely from hibernation and has to undertake a dangerous journey to look for food to see him through the winter until spring.

My Name’s Not Susie: A Life Transformed by Literacy

Naomi’s Houses: A Memoir

In the crushing poverty of post-war rural Manitoba, Naomi, a mother of three, pushes through incredible obstacles to ensure her children’s security and future prosperity. Closely observed by one of those children, Naomi endures decades of financial struggle, male dominance, and the loss of her husband while endeavouring to shelter her family as their circumstances change.

Of Destiny’s Daughters

Politics and uncommon sense collide when a spaceship suddenly appears over Ottawa, Canada.

When a gigantic damaged spaceship suddenly appears over Ottawa requesting assistance the world is thrown into confusion. Why are they really here? If they are having problems, what caused the damage?

Then there is the Thorncroft family:

Paul is feeling depressed and gets sucked up into a spaceship.

Lucile and her ex-military girlfriends are bored and looking for a fight, romance, or something to break up the monotony.

Their mother, Martha, is trying to hold the family together while she deals with her husband’s PTSD and alcoholism.

Everyone else is trying to discover the alien’s secrets and befriend them, or destroy them and anyone who has dealings with them.

of Poets & Pioneers

of Poets & Pioneers (memoir) is a moving story of the relationship between a grandfather and his grandson.

Will Massey let fate guide him in his life’s journey, had misfortune change his charted course, and took opportunities as they presented themselves, all the while upholding the morals and values he learned as a child.
Inspired by a sense of adventure, he recorded many of his life’s experiences in prose and poetry with humour and a respect for others.

When Bill Massey was old enough, he began a remarkable journey with his grandfather. Growing up in a troubled and poverty-stricken home in rural Manitoba, Bill escaped every summer to spend time with his grandfather, Will. The world opened wide for him under the inspiring influence of his friend and mentor, and their conversations and adventures sustained Bill until they could be together again.

Bill has written poetry and prose for the past thirty years and this is his second book, the first to include poetry. In many ways, he has stayed connected with his grandfather, and knows Will is with him as he writes this narrative about the two of them.

of Poets & Pioneers is a story of a remarkable relationship that has stood the test of time and is an inspiration to all.

of Pork & Potatoes

of Pork and Potatoes (memoir) is a remarkable story of perseverance in the face of adversity. Bill Massey recounts his childhood growing up in a troubled home in rural Manitoba. By finding the people who gave him space to move forward, committing to hard work, upholding his integrity, and above all, never giving up, he managed to survive and use his skills to help others, becoming a teacher, principal, and advocate for disadvantaged children.

When an illegal hog farm operation started affecting Bill Massey’s community, it was not a big step to move from teaching and advocating for children to dealing with the injustices he saw in his community. The Planning Act of Manitoba has made it virtually impossible for rural people to protect their rights and the well being of their communities from unscrupulous corporations.

With fifteen years of fighting under their belt, Bill Massey and his community continue to pursue their rights and protect the environment from the forces threatening their way of life. Of Pork and Potatoes will empower and inspire anyone looking for true stories about people who confront the odds with courage and determination and pursue justice with integrity.

Old Mill Road

Stories have been told as far back as stories existed about monsters in dark places. Old Wives’ tales to scare children into behaving. Stories kids tell each other with willful glee to see how much they can scare the other.

When Nick, Ian, David, and Felicia go wandering in the woods, the kids stumble on something so terrible they are afraid to tell anyone about it. They make a pact to keep it secret. Two days later Nick and Felicia’s family vanishes in the night.

On the Trail of the Bushman

Junior Canadian Ranger Tommy Toner has a terrible secret. During the annual JCR summer camp in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, he plays a prank which has unexpected and destructive results. Ashamed and afraid of what people will think, he keeps quiet, even though the guilt eats away at him. Tommy and his old friends Colly and Jaz team up to take part in a JCR competition at camp. They decide to search on horseback for the legendary Bushman, a Sasquatch-like creature who has been sighted near Whitehorse. But is the Bushman real or is he simply a terrifying creature of myth and legend? What Tommy and his friends discover puts all their lives in danger, and only the truth can save them.

Places Like These

A widow visits a spiritualist community to attempt to contact her late husband. A grieving teenager confronts the unfairness of his small-town world and the oncoming ecological disaster. A sexual assault survivor navigates her boyfriend’s tricky family and her own confusing desires. A mother examines unresolved guilt while seeking her missing daughter in a city slum. A lover exploits his girlfriend’s secrets for his own purposes. Whether in Ecuador or San Francisco, rural Ontario or northern Manitoba, the landscape in each of Carter’s poignant short stories reflects each character’s journey. Psychologically complex and astute, Places Like These plumbs the vast range of human reactions to those things which make us human—love, grief, friendship, betrayal, and the intertwined yet contrasting longing for connection and independence.

Poachers in the Pingos

When Junior Canadian Rangers, Colly and Jaz, visit Colly’s uncle on Canada’s Arctic coast, they are quick to discover something is amiss. Someone has been hunting gyrfalcons, the official bird of the Northwest Territories. Could it be poachers? During a pretend emergency, Colly and Jaz put two and five together and end up in a terrifying race for their lives!

POW #74324

Memoir: Real heroes aren’t just born

Prairie Girls

Prairie Girls is an unforgettable tale of a young adult who changes her life, and those around her, as she confronts bullies and false rumours with growing self-confidence. The novel features Madeline, one of the top figure skaters in Manitoba, CG her rival, and Annie, a Red River settler who once lived Winnipeg’s dynamic historical era then finds herself in the body of a 15-year-old in 21st century Winnipeg.

Pulse: Book One

Pulse is a plot-driven multi-POV dystopian sci-fi horror thriller set in 2040, centered around a corporation, a creature, and a music festival. Think Fyre Festival, Black Mirror, and X-Files combined. The story deals with themes of capitalism, consumerism, business, politics, pandemics, climate change, activism, and technology while bouncing between a diverse group of characters sure to entertain almost anyone. The book is already being praised for its fantastic use of horror, engaging world-building, and genre-bending approach utilizing some screenplay-like formatting. This is the first entry in a new series with the sequel well underway.

Pulse: Book Two

The fate of humanity rests in the hands of a few.

Pulse: Book Two is the conclusion of B.A. Bellec’s dystopian sci-fi horror duology. This time around we are tapping into iconic stories like The Stand, Station Eleven, Cloud Atlas, Contact, and The Road to add elite and ambitious scale. Our chaotic journey picks up moments after the first book ends with action from the second you start turning the pages, but if you thought you knew where the story was going, leave your expectations at the door and ask yourself this one question: how would an autonomous droid defeat a monster?

Put on the Armour of Light

Secrets are lurking behind the proper exteriors of Winnipeg’s turn-of-the-century houses.

In June 1899, the Reverend Charles Lauchlan’s industrious life as a young Presbyterian minister is knocked off the rails when he learns that his former university roommate has been arrested on murder charges.

The chief of police says it’s an open-and-shut case, but Sergeant Setter — labelled as a misfit by his fellow officers — disagrees. Lauchlan and Setter become uneasy allies in a search that takes them from the sleaziest bars to the most sumptuous drawing rooms of turn-of-the-century Winnipeg. On the way, Lauchlan uses his pastoral skills in ways never anticipated in the seminary. As time runs out he must risk everything, even his heart, in order to find the real killer.

Radioprotectors: Chemical, Biological, and Clinical Perspectives

It is essential to minimize damage to normal tissues during radiation therapy and many strategies have been employed in finding the best methods for radioprotection. This book integrates chemical, biological, and clinical perspectives on these strategies and developments, providing a comprehensive treatise. It emphasizes new concepts in radioprotection, aiming to inspire further basic science and clinical progress in radioprotector research. Radioprotectors: Chemical, Biological, and Clinical Perspectives includes the following topics:

• Early research on radioprotectors
• WR-2721, an aminothiol prodrug, as a radioprotector
• New results with naturally occurring thiols
• Nitroxides as effective radioprotectors in vitro and in vivo
• Radioprotection observed with radical scavengers or antioxidants
• Bone marrow radioprotection with cytokines and biological modifiers
• Multiple mechanisms of altering radiation response by eicosanoids
• Vascular response to radiation and the importance of vascular damage to normal tissue
• Modifiers of radiation-induced apoptosis
• Survey of clinical trials with radioprotectors
  Radiation biologists and oncologists, cancer researchers, and toxicologists will benefit from the findings discussed and strategies for future research.

Rag Pickers

Short Stories

Rebirth

Red Stone

Katya knows all about Stalin’s big plans; she learned of them in school. But those plans mean little to her until the secret police arrest Papa and seize their family farm. With Mama and her younger siblings, Katya is shoved into a crowded train headed for a forced labour camp in Siberia. Torn from everything she has ever known, Katya faces cold and hunger, and the ever-present threat of lost hope. As she clings to a single red stone from the fields of her homeland, she questions life. Where is Papa? Will she ever see him again? And what will become of Katya’s family? Inspired by a true story, Red Stone explores the trauma and heartbreak suffered by many families in the Soviet Union during the 1930s when Stalin seized individual property and villainized property owners as kulaks. GABRIELE GOLDSTONE, the oldest daughter of European immigrants, always looked for stories about her parents’ past. She majored in 20th century German literature at university but was disappointed that she could not find the stories she sought. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, her mother’s anecdotes and history began to click together. In 2004, Gabriele traveled to Ukraine and searched through former KGB files to find more missing pieces-and Katya’s red stone. Gabriele lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba and has three adult children along with a silver-grey cat and a golden-haired dog.

Reunion

Sagas & Sea Smoke

A young archeologist and her journalist friend join an eclectic mix of anthropologists descending on L’Anse aux Meadows, Canada, the only verified Viking encampment in North America and the planet’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site. After thirty-five years, the site is being re-excavated because a new clue has surfaced that might solve a one-thousand-year-old murder. An epic journey of discovery continues where East met West, the past meets the present, and Come-from-Aways meet Newfoundlanders. A modern saga of mystery, magic and mayhem is about to be written.

Scarred

In Scarred, a mother and son ascend through a decade of abandonment and abuse by making do, getting by, and hoping for small mercies.

Scion of the Fox: The Realms of Ancient, Book 1

As the winter ice begins to thaw, the fury of a demon builds — all because one girl couldn’t stay dead . . .

Roan Harken considers herself a typical high school student — dead parents, an infected eyeball, and living in the house of her estranged, currently comatose grandmother (well, maybe not so typical) — but she’s uncovering the depth of the secrets her family left behind. Saved from the grasp of Death itself by a powerful fox spirit named Sil, Roan must harness mysterious ancient power . . . and quickly. A snake-monster called Zabor lies in wait in the bed of the frozen Assiniboine River, hungry for the sacrifice of spirit-blood in exchange for keeping the flood waters at bay. Thrust onto an ancient battlefield, Roan soon realizes that to maintain the balance of the world, she will have to sacrifice more than her life in order to take her place as Scion of the Fox.

American Gods meets Princess Mononoke in this powerful first installment of a trilogy sure to capture readers’ imaginations everywhere.

Second Chances

A teenage boy with NHL potential is felled by polio in the frightening epidemics of the 1950s. In hospital, he meets a girl from the Metis community of Rooster Town, who is dealing with the ravages of polio as well as racism within the hospital and the threat of her family being evicted from their home as the city looked for places to expand development.

Sing a Song of Summer

A hot dry summer and a pall of smoke from the forest fires drifts over the lakeshore. Still, tourists and cottagers flock to Cullen Village, including the Borthwicks, who own Hazeldean, a treasured 100-year-old heritage cottage. Family matriarch Lois Borthwick, in a nearby care home, no longer recognizes any of her four children, each of whom has a decidedly different plan for the old place. The eldest, Donna, a successful local realtor married to a well-known MP, wants to tear it down and build anew. When Donna’s lifeless body is found hanged from a pier, the death is ruled a suicide. Case closed. Or is it?

After a life-threatening incident with the Major Crimes Unit, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway has decided to put family before ambition and seek a quieter, safer life with her young son. She now runs the local RCMP detachment in the heart of cottage country, and protocol dictates that she has no reason to participate in the Borthwick investigation, which is being led by her former protegee, Izzy McBain. As more of the unlucky Borthwick clan succumb to foul play, however, Roxanne cannot help but be drawn in.

So Many Windings

Reluctant amateur detective, Reverend Charles Lauchlan, departs the prairie city of Winnipeg and travels abroad to Scotland with his fiancé Maggie on a bicycle tour of the Highlands. Two near fatal accidents put members of the tour on edge and, to make matters worse, a shadowy figure seems to be observing their every move. Stuck in the remote Highland countryside, the group is thrown back on their own resources. While Charles and Maggie are trying to decipher what these strange events mean, they make another grisly discovery. It’s murder most foul and we’re not just talking about Scottish weather. So Many Windings is the second in a three-book series that began with Put on an Armour of Light (winner of the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction). Deftly wrought, meticulously researched, and scintillating with charm and period prose, Macdonald weaves a winding, cross-country tale that will require all of the detective’s ingenuity and test the measure of his resolve.

Someone’s Story

In his literary debut, B.A. Bellec writes an endearing coming-of-age tale about a group of weirdos that find and save each other from the dark depths of their minds. Someone’s Story is literally Someone’s story, as in a first-person narrative of a teenager that calls himself Someone. As he struggles to find a new footing in a new space, we encounter the many ups and downs of modern teenage life, the difficulties that adjusting to adult feelings brings, and a few tear-jerking surprises along the way.

Spirit Quest (Spirit Quest Series)

In this sequel to Withershins, Michelle returns to the past to save her friends. Michelle is happy to be home after her time-travel adventure. Then, while delving into a family secret, she discovers the terrible fate that befell her friends in the distant past. Desperate save them, she returns to 1846 to try to change history. There she struggles with hardships and racism, and learns more about her First Nations heritage.

Steath

WW2 historical fiction

Strange Labour

The majority of the global population have left the cities and towns to become diggers and work themselves to death in the construction of monumental earthworks. The adults unaffected by this mysterious obsession are part of a dwindling population that survives in the margins of a new society, struggling to construct a meaningful future for themselves. Miranda travels alone across what had once been the American West. After taking care of, and then abandoning a group of dementia patients, she meets Dave, who becomes her travelling companion. Dave recounts his many theories about how and why the apocalypse happened, as they search among the dispossessed for a place called Big Echo. A mesmerizing and uncanny meditation on the meaning of humanity in a universe indifferent to our extinction. This is the unforgettable first novel of Robert G. Penner.

Summer in Paradise

Only one road leads to paradise, and he found it.

University graduate James Witson needs a change of scene in order to get away from the English professor who ruined his life and the other painful memories James wants to forget. He randomly chooses a remote coastal village in which to find himself and write a great novel.

Paradise Cove is perched on the edge of the continent, a thin strip of civilization between the storm-tossed ocean and a thick, dark forest. Most of the locals appear friendly enough, although they hold a few odd beliefs such as little people in the forest and a White Lady who haunts the by-ways.

A remote village. Mysterious forests. What danger lies within?

Swarm

In the not-too-distant future, thirty-seven-year-old Sandy lives a challenging and unfamiliar life. She survives by fishing, farming, and beekeeping on an isolated island with her partner, Marvin, and friend, Thomson. When the footprints of a thieving child start appearing in their garden, the family must come together to protect both the child and their fragile community. In the face of scarcity, Sandy still dreams of being a mother. The thought of a child compels her to revisit her earlier life in a city plagued by power outages, unemployment, and protests. There she met Marvin and joined his violent cause, initiating a chain of events that led to tragic and life-altering consequences. A powerful debut novel, Swarm is about persevering in a time of shrinking options, and coming to terms with regrettable choices.

Tainted Amber

It’s 1937, and Katya-working as a servant girl on a Trakehner horse estate in East Prussia-dreams of being a writer. One hot June day, with Thomas Mann as her muse, and Minna Epstein as her friend, Katya heads to Rauschen, a spa town on the Baltic. Helmut and David, the estate owner’s two sons, accompany them. The foursome pairs off-Minna and Helmut, David and Katya-and things go from peaceful and predictable to dramatic and unsettling.

By summer’s end, Minna leaves for Vienna, ostensibly, to study acting. The new girl who replaces her-Gretchen-is an avid Nazi supporter. She and Helmut, an aspiring SS recruit, soon become a couple.
Meanwhile, David and Katya enjoy riding in the East Prussian countryside. One evening, David has a seizure. According to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, he must be sterilized.

David and Katya struggle to salvage their relationship, while babies seem to crop up everywhere. Katya attends a cousin’s baby shower and Gretchen deals with morning sickness. Throughout the story, Minna and Katya exchange letters and Minna finally reveals her own unwanted pregnancy.

Breeding Trakehner horses might be an exact science, but breeding perfect Aryans is much more complicated.

The Brilliant Dark

It’s been seven years since the Denizens, people with elemental powers, were unmasked, and seven years since Roan Harken and Eli Rathgar disappeared into the Brilliant Dark.

Marked by Darklings and Death alike, Saskia is a mechanically minded Mundane, raised by Barton and Phae on daring stories about Roan Harken. But the world Roan left behind is in turmoil. The Darklings now hang in the sky as a threatening black moon, and with the order-maintaining Elemental Task Guard looking to get rid of all Denizens before they rebel, Saskia’s only option is to go into the Brilliant Dark and bring Roan and Eli back.

But nothing is ever that simple.

The Brilliant Dark is the final, thrilling chapter in this series about gods, monsters, and the people who must decide if they’re willing to pay the ultimate price to protect the family they found . . . in a world that may not be worthy of saving.

The Broken Road

Steve’s life some 25 years later. He and a band of strangers are caught in Mexico while RVing by the “big one” earthquake. This book explores how Steve copes with the disaster and rescues his band of travellers.

The Day I Ceased To Being

This narration is an autobiographic memoir of a Ph.D. student and his journey through being introduced to medical research and developing a hypothesis for plausible scientific theory and practice. It is the author’s life’s experience in many dangerous and life-threatening moments, and his moments of success and glory that changed his life. The impact of life-threatening and near-death experiences and events that gave him the license to be a super-human did not cease his life from existence nor mutate him to be megalomaniac he kept his feet firmly on the ground with other fellow humans. The author describes his day-to-day experience as a research scholar and finally securing a Doctorate, which is expected to be another splendid achievement intellectual and social glory. The baffling initial impact of his success was unique, curious, and beyond imagination, which the author’s account deserves to share with the rest of humanity, including his trials and tribulations in returning to the Bed from the Bench.

The Dead Shall Inherit

Inheriting the Skipper’s House from her late aunt Deirdre MacPhail, a famed Scottish writer, looks like the solution to all Elspeth Laird’s financial problems — but this inheritance comes with a dark legacy.

New to Sulla Island’s wild beauty and fierce weather, Elspeth soon discovers a community divided by her aunt’s memory. Some cherish the tourism Deirdre brought, while others blame her for ruining their traditional way of life. Practical jokes escalate to sinister threats, and a murder confirms Elspeth’s worst fears: a killer is among them. With tensions rising and allies scarce, Elspeth must navigate a web of secrets and old grudges.

As legend says, the Skipper’s House brings doom to its owners. Elspeth must unravel the truth before she becomes the next victim of Sulla Island’s deadly legacy.

The Doolally Gang

The Doolally Gang invites its readers into a lavish care home for seniors, Hilldown Haven, a well-appointed former manor house on extensive grounds. Its residents are both venerable and vulnerable, in a domain that on the surface seems serene and beneficial until its heaving underside of greed and corruption reveals the frightening truth. When 107-year old Philip Sinclair dies unexpectedly, his fellow centenarians in Hilldown Haven plot to avenge his death. Derided by the owner-managers, Conrad and Vanessa Addington, as a bunch of doolallies, they form themselves into the Doolally Gang, committed to killing Conrad first and possibly Vanessa. The Addingtons are highly respected for their Special Patrons of Hilldown Society, a philanthropic endowment plan that enables wealthy residents in the main building to endow lifetime residencies in the smaller, darker coach house wing for homeless seniors. Criminal psychology blends with a rollicking good narrative to achieve imperfect justice.

The Door in Lake Mallion: The Brindlewatch Quintet, Book Two

The Door in Lake Mallion brings readers into a world of magic, monsters, and the folks who love them, telling a story of dazzling performers, glowing mushroom cities, and the power of shining our light for everyone to see

Dunstan has had big ambitions his entire life — bigger than the small lakeside town of Knockum — imagining himself heading a chorus line with a leading man he hasn’t quite cast yet. But on his way out of town for good, a gang of his classmates capture him and send him to the bottom of nearby Lake Mallion, rumored to harbor a magical door in its depths.

Before Dunstan drowns, the door opens. On the other side is the Geodom of Jet and the reptilian Prince Ven, who is on the run — from his past, his destiny, and the stories people tell about him. Now Ven has a chance to tell a different story, and he’ll use Dunstan to pen the script.

But the door has been keeping a dangerous secret that not even the lakebed can contain, and both worlds hang in the balance. Will the final curtain reveal that not all lights are meant to shine?

The Dust Bunny Invasion

Meet Dusty, the fun-loving dust bunny, and his friends, who help young children understand why we clean our rooms. Together, the dust bunnies illustrate the ultimate consequence of letting messes to get out of hand and allowing those dust bunnies to run wild.

The Feeders

Paige returns to Carter City with Chale, determined to find her father on Masalina Island, a place that could provide permanent sanctuary for the Forevers. But Marcia has other ideas and when Junius’s father shows up unexpectedly, plans for the next mission to save Junius go into high gear. Meanwhile a shocking discovery among the ARP residents of Golden Heights threatens Yul’s entire empire making him desperate to get to Paige and her father who may hold the key to the survival of The Iduna Project. Paige must find the courage to outwit Marcia and Yul otherwise she’ll always be a pawn in the race for immortality. But she faces a tough road and unexpected dangers and revelations in her search to uncover the truth about all the players involved in the Iduna Project. Can Paige finally find freedom and happiness? Find out in the gripping final episode of The Iduna Project.

The Final Chapter

The sequel to “The Broken Road”. Steve is called upon to manage the rescue of Western Canada and face down a rebellious government faction. With his extraordinary abilities and business empire he sets the path toward both rescuing Canada and the US.

The Forevers

Paige is a forever, genetically altered to stay nineteen forever and live in the secret Iduna Corp compound, a place where age reversal and immortality has been perfected. Forevers are told to live for the moment. Be what you want to be for a while and when you get sick of it – be something else. But when her friends start disappearing Paige suspects there’s a darker side to their luxurious prison. The official word is they’ve been kidnapped by criminals on the outside who want to use them as feeders. Feeders have a short and brutal life – kept in captivity and sucked dry of all their youth cells so the Crime Lords can enjoy eternal youth. Her friend Junius involves her in planning a daring escape from the compound so they can infiltrate the IdunaCorp organization and find out what’s really happening to their missing friends. They’re joined by the charismatic and musical Chale, a Keener whose attraction to Paige causes tension between her and Junius. What will they find on the outside? How has the quest for immortality changed humanity? The journey becomes so dangerous Paige is forced to push herself to the limits of her endurance and to make tough decisions about who she can trust – Junius or Chale.

The Frost

Deep in the Frost Woods lives an ancient creature, feared by all, who rules over everything in the forest. The very forest that Beth now calls home… When Beth moves to the Frost Woods with her father, stepmother, and stepsister after a terrible spring flood, she is determined to make the best of her new situation. Beth’s father is often away hunting, and her stepmother is jealous of Beth’s kindness and intelligence, but Beth is determined to make the best of it. One day Beth is sent to collect firewood just after a dangerous winter storm. But the only place to go is deep into the heart of the Frost Woods… This adaptation of the classic Russian fairytale Morozko teaches readers about our responsibility to live in peace with nature. It also shows that there are no bad people, only good people making wrong choices. Through positivity and hope, we can change our circumstances.” Also, the book is available on 50,000 online retailer platforms. Put “The Frost” by Irina Mazor ” at the Google search bar and choose whatever selling channel works for a given bier.

The Fundamental List

Who is Mr. Allistar? That’s what Anne Hunt wants to know. After Anne finds a photograph with the name ‘Mr. Allistar’ in the hand of her dead aunt she is determined to learn more about him and his involvement in her aunt’s suicide. Follow Anne as she uncovers the disturbing truth about Mr. Allistar and her aunt.

The Global Web of Cannibals

Highly lucrative criminally twined global business of illegal organ transplant by trafficking men,women and children from every human habitation on this earth to satisfy their unsatiable greed and thrust for cash, where human life do not matter but their organ and every bit of living tissue matters.
Criminal groups globally works in concert , as collaborator and as competitors as well,with knives on each other’s throat as and when needed to plunge to see the end of a competitor, a traitor , whistle blower even a close relative.
Yet they thrive on, leaning on each other’s shoulder. Where race, nationality, language, Sex, Geography and social barrier are irrelevant. Just Money and lots and lots of it only matters.

The Gypsy Queen

Travis discovers his newest get rich quick scheme in an abandoned riverboat. Dreaming of the wealth and glamour she will bring, he becomes obsessed with rebuilding her.

Darius sees only rot, decay, and their ruination in the old boat. Travis’s best friend and unwilling business partner, Darius is unwilling to abandon Travis to his fate. He is committed to seeing it through, regardless of the costs to himself.

Struggling to rebuild her together, they are pitted against everyone from the Shipbuilders’ Union to the even more ruthless local casino boss, who desires to possess the Gypsy Queen himself.

As Travis and Darius’s lives become further intertwined with the Gypsy Queen, the strange accidents surrounding the boat escalate. Under the Gypsy Queen’s spell, Travis is oblivious to the sense of dread that fills those who enter the boat as she awakens with a hunger for blood. The Gypsy Queen’s dark past will not be forgotten.

The Homes We Seek

A beautiful love story against a backdrop of tragic loss (“By Candlelight”)… A life-changing train journey (“The Train”)… A young woman who abruptly runs away from home (“What Will Happen Next?”)… A powerful tale of love and friendship (“Another Part of Her”)… A meeting between a professor and her student (“Hot Chocolate”)… A grieving young adult returning to the home of her parents after a five-year absence (“When I Left”)… In The Homes We Seek (2024), Cendrine Marrouat delivers narratives whose rich details, emotions, relatable characters, and life lessons will encourage you to release regret and anger, and find your inner bliss. The Homes We Seek groups six short stories from three of Cendrine Marrouat’s books: “The Train,” “What Will Happen Next?” and “In Her Own Words”.

The Kulak’s Daughter

Olga likes little things – especially the tiny apples in the orchard in the spring, or her baby brother’s little toes. But when her family is labeled ‘Kulak’ and exiled to Siberia, she starts to hate little things – especially the bedbugs that overrun the barrack at night, or the lice that carry the dreaded typhus. Suddenly Olga’s little world is overwhelmed by Stalin’s big plans.

The Lake and the Library

Wishing for something out of Alice in Wonderland, something beyond her adventureless life, 16-year-old Ash is counting down the days until she and her mother move away from their prairie hometown of Treade. It’s Ash’s summer of goodbyes until, after a turn of fate, she finds her way into the mysterious, condemned building on the outskirts of town — one that has haunted her entire childhood with secrets and questions. What she finds inside — or what finds her — is an untouched library, inhabited by an enchanting mute named Li. Brightened by Li’s charm and his indulgence in her dreams, Ash becomes locked in a world of dusty books and dying memories, with Li becoming the attachment to Treade she never wanted. As the summer vanishes underneath her, and her quest to discover who Li is — or was — proves nearly impossible, Ash must choose between the road ahead or the dream she’s living before it’s too late. 

The Latchkey Kids

What would you do if you came home from school alone and heard noises in the basement?Five kids, twelve and thirteen years old and on their own before and after school, each faces their own struggle. A broken home, illness, crushes, bullying, depression, absent parents, suicidal thoughts, broken friendships, and fears of being only a kid and home alone.There is also the strange noises houses make when they are quiet and you are alone, particularly the noises in the basement. Something is down there. Madison, Andrew, Kylie, Anna, and Dylan are brought together by circumstances that feel overwhelmingly out of their control. The temptation of exploring an old abandoned brick building, loneliness, and fleeing an attempted abduction, each is drawn to the old abandoned building for different reasons.There, they will fight for their lives, where the monsters in the basement nest.

The Latchkey Kids: The Disappearance of Willie Gordon

“Count and the nightmare goes away.

One two three four five six.

  Count and the nightmare goes away.

One two three four five six.

   Count and the nightmare goes away.  

One two three four five six.”

“Count and the nightmare goes away?”

Spring break is over and, still in shock from the events of the night of the fire; the kids are forced back into everyday life as if nothing happened. But it did happen. And it is happening again.

While the kids try to come to terms with what happened the night of the fire at the abandoned factory, nothing in their lives seems to have changed when everything feels like it did.

A broken home, illness, crushes, bullying, depression, absent parents, suicidal thoughts, they all continue as before. 

Amber Shaw returns to school and the Mean Team is broken up, but will it last?

Everything is back to normal. Right?

And then Willie Gordon vanishes.

While new jealousies burn, problems kept secret are revealed and Joshua joins the group after his sister committed suicide, the group feels they are the only ones who can find Willie. Nobody believes them the monsters are real.

The kids have to face the monsters again, in the basements where they nest.

The Lil’ Cow and the Super Scooper 4000 Ice Cream Making Machine

A cow attempts to raise money to buy her dream ice cream makingmachine

The Lioness Never Cries 

A young newly graduated Medical Doctor aspiring Cancer researcher was sent to SierraLeone to take responsibility for being a District.Medical Officer. Dreams from David Livingstone and many other early explorers of Africa intrigued him. But the real-life encounter of challenges of living in the conditions, was a fascinating and painful awakening, at every step and in every corner of the passage. Be it geographical, Be it social, or Governmental, every encounter is a new learning, new knowledge be it special physical and Psychological or ecological, there was always something new to learn. This has a deep and lasting impression, which guided through his entire life.

The McAllister Farm (McAllister Series Book 2)

Step back in time to learn the secret behind the bodies in Where the Bodies Are in this disturbing look at the boy who will grow up to create the killer.

1981

Meet David McAllister, the boy who will grow up to create the killer.

The Meaning

From the mind of multidisciplinary artist Cendrine Marrouat, comes a unique collection that blends poetry, poetic thoughts, short personal essays, and never-released photography. Cendrine’s most personal project to date, The Meaning (2023) will leave you inspired and with a sense of renewed gratitude for life.

The Moth Dreamer

Sixteen-year-old Aubrey grapples with grief and guilt about her cousin’s death—a fate that she foresaw in an unexpected vision but did nothing to stop.

Grief, guilt, and dark visions won’t let Aubrey go in this coming-of-age novel for young adults.

Sixteen-year-old Aubrey is horrified when a vision about her cousin’s death comes true. Overcome with grief, Aubrey begins to see more troubling visions about the futures of those around her. To make matters worse, a mysterious Trickster keeps visiting her dreams with cryptic messages she doesn’t understand.

As Aubrey’s well-being unravels, a dark creature—one that feeds on suffering—begins stalking her. With the help of her Kokum, a medicine woman, Aubrey learns to tap into her spiritual strength. But when the creature crosses into the real world, Aubrey must find the strength to protect her family, and in doing so, confront her guilt and find peace.

The Moth Dreamer is a gripping tale that blends Anishinaabe traditions with a haunting journey through the physical and spiritual realms.

The Night Side

When Ruby Carlson was eighteen, she ran away from her home in Stoneybrook, Montana, and vowed she’d never return. Never return to life under the control of her manipulative mother, Ida, a self-styled medium and psychic scammer who made a career out of ruining people’s lives. Never return to the small town where enemies lurk at every turn. But now, twenty years later, Ruby is back. Her mother is missing, presumed dead, and Ruby reluctantly returns to a home filled with chilling memories to settle Ida’s affairs. Did she really commit suicide by drowning, or is this another dark scheme? Ruby thought she knew everything about her mother, but finds herself unraveling a web of lies and secrets to reveal a story more twisted than anyone could have imagined . . .

The Parasites

Paige is in Carter City, Junius’s idyllic home. Life seems to be perfect until Paige uncovers a darker side to the peaceful paradise. Before she can confront Junius about it, they’re whisked away on a secret mission to infiltrate the Crime Lords. After a dangerous and grueling training period, Paige and Junius plunge into the strange, ruined world of Sin City and the Crime Lords, whose lives are defined by death defying feats and undying loyalty in battle. They meet Antoine, the charismatic but dangerous leader of the Snakes, who draws them into the wild and crazy Sin City lifestyle, and reveals the gruesome methods used to access the forever serum from the captured feeders. Paige makes some unexpected discoveries about her past, and Chale’s sudden reappearance forces her to make decisions and take risks she never imagined, to ensure his safety. One thing never changes – the people with power will do anything to gain control of the Forever technology. But who will gain the upper hand? The Crime Lords or the wealthy ARPS backed by Iduna Corporation? Or maybe someone else Paige never suspected.

The Perfect Family Man

Five years ago, Olivia’s little boy went missing. Now her husband Nate has vanished too. As Olivia investigates, she discovers a web of secrets and lies that lead her to question her husband and her marriage.

The Pitman’s Daughter

When Crag Street, the grimy street of colliery houses where gossip reigned, tuberculosis killed, and mining families slaved to survive, is torn down and rebuilt in a museum, Rita receives an unexpected invitation to the Grand Opening. Reeling from a recent divorce, the visit forces her to relive painful memories about her early life on Crag Street and to finally face the man she’s loved all her life.

The Plasma

James Wilberforce has finally achieved the American dream. Since immigrating to America from the West Indies as a young adult, he’s managed to build a successful business and family with his wife and three children. James knows he leads a blessed life, and he is eager to expand his achievements.

Then the unthinkable happens: James learns he has a rare form of bone-marrow cancer that has yet to be successfully treated and cured. The only expert attempting to research the disease is Professor Hooper, who’s conducting a study on experimental treatments.

Professor Hooper is James’s best hope of survival, and his research associate Dr. Mary-Ann Sanford assures James that he is in good hands while he’s participating. Although James’s symptoms improve at first, his condition later worsens. James desperately wants to believe in the cure, but even as Professor Hooper and Mary-Ann assure him it’s within reach, his deteriorating body may be evidence of a dangerous scheme at work.

As his trust in the experts begins to waver, he finds his control over his finances and the connection to his once-happy family both waning. James is facing the toughest battle of his life—and it’s not just cancer he’s fighting.

The Price of Success

Book #1 in the Steve Quinn saga. This book sets the stage to understand Steve and what life is about for someone like him.

The Prussian Lieutenant

Historical fiction set in the 1800s: translation

The Road North

The sequel to novel #1. Continues with his efforts to understand and cope with his family, his increasing imbalance, and ultimate discovery of his extraordinary talents.

The Salvation of Yasch Siemens

Born “on the wrong side of the double dike” in the mythical Mennonite village of Gutenthal, Yasch Siemens seems destined for a life as a hired hand in love with the wrong girl. But all of that changes when he meets Oata Needarp. Oata is determined to make Yasch hers, and it only takes some chokecherry wine and the fragrance of Oata’s “Evening in Schanzenfeld” perfume to seal Yasch’s fate. Shortlisted for both the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and the Books in Canada Best First Book Award, The Salvation of Yasch Siemens is an outrageous, comic ride through Canadian literature’s most unforgettable community.

Now this enduring Canadian classic includes a loving preface from the author, Armin Wiebe, and an insightful new essay from Nathan Dueck. Together they rediscover the warmth and wit in the world of Gutenthal, a profound part of Canada’s literary landscape.

The Savage Instinct

“A fascinating portrayal of womanhood in Victorian England that is also a nail-biting thriller that will keep readers riveted until the very last page.” —Booklist

Perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, this taut psychological thriller offers a delicious take on deviant and defiant Victorian women in a time when marriage itself was its own prison. England, 1873. Clara Blackstone has just been released after one year in a private asylum for the insane. Clara has two goals: to reunite with her husband, Henry, and to never—ever—return to the asylum. As she enters Durham, Clara finds her carriage surrounded by a mob gathered to witness the imprisonment of Mary Ann Cotton—England’s first female serial killer—accused of poisoning nearly twenty people, including her husbands and children. Clara soon finds the oppressive confinement of her marriage no less terrifying than the white-tiled walls of Hoxton. And as she grows increasingly suspicious of Henry’s intentions, her fascination with Cotton grows. Soon, Cotton is not just a notorious figure from the headlines, but an unlikely confidante, mentor—and perhaps accomplice—in Clara’s struggle to protect her money, her freedom and her life.

The Secret Sister

Anna is on a mission to find out how and why her sister Birdie disappeared. Will she ever be able to uncover the truth? This addictive thriller will keep you guessing until the last twist. Anna and her sister Birdie grew up in foster care, moving from home to home, often abused and neglected, until finally Anna lost track of Birdie. Years later, Anna is working as a teacher and married to Guy, a loving man from a wealthy family. Anna wants to tell Guy about her past and about Birdie, but before she can do that, she needs to find out what happened to her sister.

The Stars of Mount Quixx (The Brindlewatch Quintet, Book One)

Welcome to Brindlewatch — a world like ours from days gone by. Fast shiny cars, growing metropolises, and a war on the other side of the ocean with an enemy no one can see. Back at home, monsters, spirits, and the humans who get entangled with them populate the pages of the Brindlewatch Quintet — five individual, interconnected tales of mystery, romance, and ultimately, belonging. This is the newest YA fantasy series by beloved writer S.M. Beiko, award-winning author of the Realms of Ancient trilogy. It is notable for its charming and quirky tone and diverse cast of relatable characters. The series will begin with The Stars of Mount Quixx in spring 2023 and conclude with The Battle for Brindlewatch in 2027.

The Stinkwater Escapee

The Stinkwater Escapee follows Big Al, the largest crocodile in Stinkwater Marsh, whose hunger and curiosity carry him far from home into the bewildering world of humans. After hitching a ride on a passing airplane, he stumbles through villages, diners, motels, and bars, learning to stand, talk, dress, and navigate human customs in the only way a crocodile can—badly, boldly, and with surprising heart. Blending humor with an emotional undercurrent, the story explores identity, adaptation, and what it means to become “human.”

The Sugar Bug Rush

Meet Sweetie, the gold-digging sugar bug, and her mining coworkers, who help young children understand why we brush and floss our teeth. Together, the sugar bugs illustrate the ultimate consequence of overindulging our sweet tooth and allowing those greedy sugar bugs to take charge.

The Threefold Cord

The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family

In a family torn apart by sexual violence, a daughter finds clarity and redemption in telling her story

It’s the antithesis of why a wedding should be memorable. In 1992, at a sister’s nuptials, Besel family members discovered that their father, Jock Besel, had molested their youngest sister. As more survivors came forward, the family realized that their father had sexually assaulted four of the six sisters in a family of eleven children, and had been doing so for years. Despite there being enough evidence to charge their father, the trial and prosecution rocked the Besel family and deeply divided their small rural community.

The Unravelling is a brave, riveting telling of the destruction caused by sexual assault, and the physical, psychological, emotional, financial, and legal tolls survivors often shoulder.

The Unweaving

Threatened by encroaching colonialism, one Métis family struggles to protect their way of life.

The Wishing Stone book 1: Madelaine and Mocha

Madelaine thought things could not possibly get worse when her parents dragged her out on a boring, no electronics and thank you very much for ruining my life, camping trip.

Then Mocha, her American Cocker Spaniel and currently her only reason for getting through each day, is lost in the forest. Their attempts to find the dog are futile and Madelaine is devastated.

A local boy, Geoffrey, joins Madelaine in her search, promising to not give up and showing her the beauty of the forest.

Then, Madelaine’s family wakes up to find her gone, vanished from the tent in the night wearing only her nightgown.

Things That Need Doin’

A literary speculative story set in rural Manitoba, following robotics engineer Ansel Rademacher in the aftermath of a death in the family and the collapse of his marriage. Drawn back to an off-grid ecovillage he once helped build, Ansel is pulled into an uncanny series of events involving memory gaps, a sacred cedar grove, and the boy who grew up alongside his daughter. Blending grief, technology, and the quiet setting of the Interlake, the story explores responsibility, community, and the moments that spark renewal.

This Has Nothing To Do With You

When Melony Barnett’s mother commits a violent murder, Mel is left struggling with the loss of her parents and her future. For more than two years, she drifts around the continent, trying to carve out a life that has nothing to do with her past, before returning to her Northern Ontario home and adopting a rescue dog–a mastiff with a tragic history. As she struggles to help the dog heal and repair her relationship with her brother, Matt, she begins to uncover layers of secrets about her family –secrets that were the fuel for her mother’s actions. This Has Nothing to Do With You is a compulsively readable novel that follows a dynamic cast of characters, revealing the complexity of the bonds that are formed through trauma and grief–with siblings, lovers, friends, and dogs.

Toltec Dawn: Book One of the Toltec Conquests, An Alternate History Adventure

915 AD: The vast treasure fleet of China’s Tang Dynasty reaches the western shores of North America, encountering the emerging Toltec Nation
1115 AD: With advantages of steel and gunpowder acquired from China, the emerging Toltec Empire’s junk, Golden Jaguar, makes landfall on the coast of Ireland.
1215 AD: Amid wars, rebellion and plague the Toltec Empire has stretched across the Atlantic, conquering England and Ireland and setting its sights on the Continent beyond.

12:15 AD: Captain Mixcoatl, a hero of the Toltec Empire settles in with his wife at his new command at a fortress overlooking the provincial town of London.

Across the Irish Sea in Cashel, a local youth Fergus is apprenticed to the service of the God Tezcatlipoca.

On the road to nearby Saint Albans, Rowena, a young Saxon girl falls into the hands of a band of outlaws.

In a different history where a New World empire conquers the old, three lives as they struggle to survive turbulent times beset with wars between nations and conflicting religions.

Toltec Khan: Book Two of the Toltec Conquests, an Alternate History Adventure

THE SECOND CHAPTER IN THE SAGA OF A WORLD WHERE THE TOLTEC EMPIRE CONQUERED THE BRITISH ISLES

1215AD: The Toltec Empire rules the Isles, within it three lives struggle to survive turbulent times of war, plague and religious conflict. The Toltec Fortress overlooking London is under siege from a native revolt as Londoners try to overthrow their oppressors. Trapped within the Fortress, our three protagonists must endure their own trials.

Fergus, appointed Interrogator for the god Tezcatlipoca in England with the mandate to suppress or convert the native Christians, must find a way to work with the local priests of Tezcatlipoca and that god’s rival, Quetzalcoatl. He finds himself caught in a delicate balance as a go-between for the people trapped in the fortress, and the rebel forces surrounding them.

Captain Mixcoatl’s loyalty is torn as his best friend throws in with the desperate governor and his scheme to turn the Toltec province into an independent kingdom. Outnumbered and beset, Mixcoatl must once again look to the sly King of Gwynedd for assistance to raise a force to save England and the life of his pregnant wife.

Rowena, maid to Captain Mixcoatl’s wife, finds herself on the parapet with her mistress staring down at a rebel army, facing the final assault with a group of women and children.

The fate of the Island Colonies hangs in the balance, and our three protagonists are drawn ever closer, as forces clash over who will rule the overseas jewel of the Toltec Empire.

Toltec Noon: Book Three of the Toltec Conquests, an Alternate History Adventure

TOLTEC NOON, the final Book of the Toltec Conquests plays out, set in 1215AD, the Toltec Empire has conquered England and Ireland, and set its sights on Europe. Contending with revolts from within and without, as the expanding Empire struggles to rule their English provinces, with three protagonists struggling to survive.

Fergus continues to plot in the devious world of London politics. Taking matters into his own bloodied hands, he lets nothing stand in the way of becoming the high priest. But there are others as ruthless.

General Mixcoatl must lead an army into Scotland before he can assume the rank of governor of the province. But old debts and old passions return to plague him as a new and deadly crisis rises from across the ocean.

Rowena’s lover and the father to her unborn child has left for the wars across the Channel and she fears he will not return, or if he does, it will be impossible for him to wed her. Hunted by assassins, she must leave those she loves and once more strike out on her own.

Religious politics blaze hot, wars rage, and blood is shed as these three struggle for power and the ultimate good of the land.

Two Foot Punch

Nikki blames her brother, Derek, for their parents’ death in a house fire.

But when Derek gets involved with a gang, Nikki knows she is the only one who can save him. Enlisting the help of a girl named Rain, who uses her athletic abilities to carry out acts of petty thievery, Nikki uses all her gymnastic and free-running skills to stay ahead of the gang and keep her brother from being killed.

This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for middle-grade readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!

Under Italian Skies

Canadian soldier Mert Massey arrives in England on November 15, 1941, with his best friend Lloyd “Red” Oliver. Having grown up on farms in Manitoba, both Mert and Red are equipped with a variety of skills that stand them in good stead while stationed in Italy during World War II.

The two friends look out for each other through thick and thin, and letters from Mert’s fiancé in England and his family in Canada help him deal with the tragedy and chaos of war. The difficult and sometimes dangerous volunteer work Mert undertakes is reflected in his moving and poignant poetry.

When their Unit finds an orphaned Italian boy, keeping him safe in a combat zone presents a major challenge for Mert and Red. In spite of the war going on around them, they manage to teach Gino to read and write, but when they leave Italy for Holland and Germany, they are faced with a heart-wrenching decision.

The book concludes in an unexpected way that will warm the hearts of all readers.

Waltraut

The story of a first-generation-Canadian girl growing up in the shadows of the Second World War and navigating two cultures while struggling to find herself.

Eleven-year-old Waltraut wants to fit in at school, but it’s not easy. Not only does her name rhyme with the ethnic slur that is often hurled her way, but no one can relate to her immigrant family and their complicated past. On weekends, however, she attends German school with friends who are just like her. They share a language, food, and customs–and they understand what it’s like to live in two cultures.

As Waltraut navigates between her two worlds, she copes by reading and imagines how much easier her life would be if her name was Nancy, like the heroine of her favourite mystery series. So when her family moves to a new neighbourhood, Waltraut seizes the chance to reinvent herself. But she soon learns the price of pretending to be someone else. With support from an insightful teacher, a warm-hearted father, a tough-minded mother, and even her annoying younger brother, she embraces her true self, with all of its complexities and contradictions.

We’re Not in Kansas

A Sci Fi Adventure with a Soupcon of Romance

Archeologist and single mother Macy and her rebellious teenage daughter Tiffany are thrown together on a wild adventure across the world and into outer space.

Macy is obsessed with tracing the origins of a mysterious statue of the ancient Egyptian cat-goddess, Bastet, she’s got no time to look after a brat. Tiffany finds herself dumped by an absentee father, and would rather spend her time at the mall, rather than crawl through dusty ruins.

Feuding mother and daughter find themselves catapulted in a wild journey around the wall, encountering a grizzled Indiana Jones look-alike, a strange police inspector, a dangerous dictator, all leading them to a chamber containing an ancient spaceship which takes off with them to destinations unknown.

Set in the near future, We Aren’t in Kansas is a marriage of a thriller and speculative fiction, and a soupcon of romance.

Where the Bodies Are (McAllister Series)

Step into the twisted mind of a serial killer in this disturbing psychological thriller.What kind of dark secret pushes a man to commit the unimaginable, even as he is sickened by his own actions?Dead bodies are being left where they are sure to be found. But, the killer made a mistake; one victim left for dead survived. Kept in a medically induced coma while she recovers, they can only watch her and wait for the killer to come back for her.While Detective Michael Underwood protects their only living witness, Detective Jim McNelly and his reporter friend Lawrence Hawkworth are determined to find the killer and bring his killing spree to an end. Instead, they discover a bigger mystery.The killer’s reality blurs between past and present with a compulsion driven by a dark secret locked in a fractured mind. Overcome by a blind rage that leaves him wallowing in remorse with the bodies of victim after victim, he is desperate to stop killing.After learning of his victim’s survival, the killer sees it as a sign they are meant to be together. Threatening her tenuous grip on life, he is determined to take back his prize while he continues kidnapping and murdering young women.Accustomed to a life of abuse, one victim’s experience becomes her refuge in a desperate bid for survival, finding herself insinuated into the killer’s life as something more than a kidnapping victim. She finds a soft place in his heart.Instead of killing her, he keeps Katherine Kingslow imprisoned in the dark while he continues plotting to take back the Jane Doe in the hospital. How long can Kathy survive and will she lose her own mind?The search for the killer will lead to his dark secret buried in the past, something much larger than a man compelled to kill again and again.

Wind on the Sounds

A heartwarming tale of a woman with a difficult past and fears who steps outside her comfort zone into one of the toughest yacht races in North America.

Withershins (Spirit Quest Series)

Most people have heard of Withershins- the ritual where one runs around a church three times at midnight. Some claim you will be transported to the Netherworld. What happens to Michelle is quite different. She finds herself trapped in the past, forced to survive without modern conveniences. A native shaman tells her she is the chosen one, but Michelle has no idea why. As she struggles with life in a primitive time, she learns more than just how to survive. Despite facing illness, death, and bigotry, she learns patience and even falls in love, as much as she tries to avoid it.

Wonder Horse

Fitting into a new school in a new city isn’t easy, but dreams come true for Sera with a gift from her parents: a gorgeous and spirited American Paint horse. Sera’s bubble bursts when a mean girl, Brittany, tells her that neither she nor her less then well-trained horse belong with the rest of the “reiners” in their riding class. As Sera sets out to prove Brittany wrong, she risks losing her passion for training and the friendship of another girl, Dev, who truly understands her. This story was originally published by Stabenfeldt (Stavanger, Norway) in 2011 as Wager the Wonder Horse and distributed in six languages: Norwegian,Hungarian, Czech, German, Finnish and Swedish. Anita Daher has been entrenched in the publishing industry since 1995, and is (thus far) author of fourteen books for children and teens. Aside from short stints as grave-plot seller, tour guide, and children’s party clown, she’s worked in aviation, publishing and broadcasting. When not word wrangling, she enjoys inhabiting characters on stage and screen.

Your Breath Smells Like Chocolate

If you want to know if your child is paying attention, quietly open a chocolate bar in the next room. It’s the tale as old as time: hiding to eat treats we don’t want to share with our kids, and getting sniffed-out and outsmarted at every try.