Single mother, Sheen, has only $50 to her name. After learning about an impending Government investigation against her, she takes her 12-year-old son, Tey, and her 8-year-old son, Jamal, out for some holiday fun in Downtown Chicago; only to find themselves lost on the Elevated Commuter Train. Before their first stop, Sheen finds a flyer for an event with free food and housing on the floor of the train. Soon after she reads about it, the train begins to shake . They watch their car separates, slide off the rail and crashe to the ground. This leaves them no choice. They get off the still relatively stable train and find Vinn’s Place. Vinn, the owner, is a man from Naples who creates phones using more than solar panels, located farther up then 30 floors overlooking beautiful, Lake Michigan. But all is not okay in their special world when Sheen, Tey and Jamal realize they might have gone too far.
While finding their way, they must contend with a city they soon no longer recognize. Together they face their worst economic crisis and the boys remember their absent father, who left the country to avoid deportation, not so long ago.
Travel
Flavour with Benefits: France
Would you love to escape on a romantic journey? Your ticket is between the covers of the stunning Flavour with Benefits: France.Discover the world’s most popular travel destination:• Experience breathtaking France with over 100 original photographs.• Sail by limestone cliffs on a warm Mediterranean current.• Descend a glowing staircase to a wine cave filled with millions of bottles of champagne.Learn about women who changed the world• The Grande Dame of Champagne who couldn’t vote yet built an empire.• La mère (the mother) Brazier whose restaurants set new culinary standards.Food that doesn’t compromise flavour or health• Enjoy 50+ inspired recipes accompanied by stunning photographs.• Learn about food as medicine and a five-year-old girl.• Crave a dessert that reimagines: I’ll have what she’s having!Flavour with Benefits: France will inspire you to plan the trip of your dreams and indulge inflavours that deliver a pleasant surprise.Co-authors, Cathy Connally and Charley Best, are obsessed with developing new approaches toiconic flavours served with a side-dish of travel. Flavour with Benefits: France is the first bookin the series.

Meet Cathy Connally & Charley Best


Cathy Connally and Charley Best are world travelers who are obsessed with beautiful photography and are experts in maximizing flavour and health in their unique recipes. Take this journey with them to France and see some amazing sights, experience some beautiful food and meet some amazing women.
The Family Farm
Meet Delia Coffey
Amidst the Stones of Celtic Ireland
Meet Jeanne Crane
Travel Adventures for the Young at Heart
Meet Al & Sunny Lockwood
This is China – Misadventures in the Middle Kingdom Part 1: The North
Meet Alex Coverdale
My Love Affair with Manhattan (Vignettes of a Life in the City)
The very concept of New York City conjures up a wealth of emotions in many people. For writer Joanie Strulowitz, it has always been a place of magic: an enticing playground, a cascade of art, a wonderland of fascinating characters, a youth serum to keep her feeling forever young.
Believing herself to be a New Yorker who just happened to be born in Iowa, Strulowitz felt the tantalizing call of Manhattan from the time she was four, and eventually made her home there. In this love song to the City, she pays adoring tribute to the essence of Manhattan from its intense pace and the pounding excitement in the air to the funky charm and even the glittering pavement that provides a stage on which it all unfolds.
The City is her laboratory, her art studio, and the extraordinary inspiration for this collection of captivating vignettes. In each short but sublime piece, Strulowitz evokes the luminous ambiance that has lured artists and adventure seekers to the island metropolis for generations: enthralling chance encounters, the slightly terrifying exhilaration of first subway rides, the soothing clink of silverware in a favorite sidewalk cafe, the urge to break into song when discovering a perfect little boutique.
Anyone who has lived in New York City, played tourist there, or just dreamed of paying a visit will find something to love in this transcendent appreciation of the jewel-encrusted celebration of life and art that is Manhattan.



Meet Joanie Strulowitz


ALTHOUGH JOANIE STRULOWITZ is seasoned in numerous aspects of the arts and business, writing has always been her baby. While raising her two daughters in Iowa, she joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Years later, after finding her first apartment in Los Angeles, she discovered that–magnetically–the SCBWI offices were two blocks from her front door.
Originally from Iowa and later Chicago, Strulowitz moved to New York because, as she explains in My Love Affair with Manhattan (Vignettes of a Life in the City), “My soul has always lived there, and my body needs to catch up.”
With a memory that is largely emotive, she recalls almost every square inch of how she felt growing up. As an observer who always thought something was wrong with her because she didn’t fit in, she discovered that writing books, and being involved with all of the arts, help to make sense of life.
Now she seeks to be the voice she searched for, so the lessons she learned can help others to find the gifts in their differences–and to believe in themselves and their dreams.
Today you can find her (and her black turtleneck) in Los Angeles, writing a chapter on her grocery bag while walking home, or completing her YA fantasy novel during Pilates sessions.
Snapshots of Ireland Volume 2 Travels in Kerry
Meet Jeanne Crane
Cruising from Boston to Montreal
Discover historic wonders and modern delights guaranteed to enlarge your heart and expand your understanding of Canada and its people.
Veteran travelers Al and Sunny Lockwood share their adventures and misadventures on this scintillating cruise of exploration.
Join them for an unforgettable journey through part of the largest country in the Western Hemisphere.
In “Cruising from Boston to Montreal” readers will:
– attend a rousing baseball game at Boston’s Fenway Park
– Learn Alexander Graham Bell’s involvement with Canada’s first airplane flight.
– Visit the Prince Edward Island farm that was the setting for the Anne of Green Gables books.
– Discover how lobster graduated from barnyard feed to gourmet fare.
– Sail Canada’s greatest waterway, the mighty Saint Lawrence River.
– View breath-taking cathedrals and romantic lighthouses.
– Discover Halifax’s heart-breaking connection with the Titanic tragedy.
– and much more.
This travel memoir will introduce you to the fascinating heroes, stunning beauty and staggering tragedies that have helped shape Canada’s Maritimes, Quebec City, and Montreal.
“The first-person descriptions read with the drama of fiction and the excitement of journal writing….” – Midwest Book Review


Meet Al & Sunny Lockwood
Al and Sunny Lockwood have traveled by foot, car, rail, air and cruise ship. They’ve camped in national parks, photographed springtime flowers in Death Valley and wintry surf along the rugged beaches of Northern California.
They’ve ridden Scotland’s Falkirk Wheel, Norway’s Flam Railway, and Ushuaia’s train at the end of the world.
They’ve photographed Gibraltar’s Barbary apes and Gentoo Penguins frolicking in the surf on Falkland Island beaches.
Everywhere they go, they capture unforgettable moments with their cameras and notebooks, moments to share with their readers. Their award-winning work has been published in magazines and newspapers.
“We write to encourage others to travel, to take a break from their ordinary routine and discover the many rewards of traveling with your eyes wide open,” Sunny said.
Al added, “We also write to share the wonder of our own travels. To help you feel what it’s like to be on a cruise ship, or wandering the back alleys of Venice, Italy. We hope our books give readers a real sense of our travel adventures.”