Coming of age

The Beautiful-Ugly

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She’s sixteen. She’s alone. And the world thinks she’s crazy. What could possibly happen next? Well, she’s going to show them…

When sixteen-year-old Connelly Pierce wakes up inside an unknown psychiatric hospital with both her wrists slashed, she begins the arduous task of piecing together the events of her life that led her there. Her own cognitive behavioral therapy (as she had learned so well from them). Beginning with the sudden death of her mother and father when she was six, and the only world she knew disappeared, literally, overnight. That’s when, with no known or, at least, close relatives, she and her nine-year-old brother Eric find themselves cast into the nightmare quagmire of government child protection agencies, and Connelly begins her incredible fourteen-year journey—her dark odyssey—into her own brave new world. A world, she realizes, she must not only quickly adapt, but fight back as well, if she hopes to survive.

Meet James Snyder

James Snyder was born in Memphis, Tennessee and lived in many parts of the United States before settling with his family in Napa Valley. Among a variety of careers and occupations, he was a soldier with a tactical mobile operations unit in Germany, as well as an executive for a Fortune 500 company.

He has published short stories in the Houghton Mifflin Black Mask anthologies, the Ginosko Literary Journal, and was a finalist in the New Letters’ Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction. He is the author of the military thriller AMERICAN WARRIOR, the suspense thriller DESOLATION RUN, the literary coming-of-age THE BEAUTIFUL-UGLY, and the short story collection TALES OF THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

His latest novel, the historical thriller FRENCH QUARTERS, was just released by Milford House Press.

He occasionally blogs at jamessnyder.net and currently lives in Texas where he writes full time.

Armageddon’s Rod

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A Wound in the Earth: A Novel

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Hubert, Angela, and Ralph Barney are riding horses in the grasslands when they discover an enormous egg. To the palms of their eager hands, the egg communicates a message of life, of a heart ticking. To their rapt ears, pressed against the shell, it speaks of something deep, something primeval. They do a reconnaissance, frightful thoughts chugging through their minds: What kind of monster laid it? What danger does this portend?

The Brit, Malcolm Moreland, totes a large-caliber rifle and all the ammo he can fit on his web belt. The Brit is full of cautionary tales for the Barneys as he and they take cover and wait for the egg to hatch. Before long, eggshell begins to chip away and something frightful pokes its head out. The Barneys leave their idyllic childhoods behind when they and the Brit follow the giant hatchling into another world.

Thirteen-year-old Chad Garrick lives in the shadows of the Barneys, and within his own special kind of darkness. Secretly, he follows the Barneys and the Brit into the land of giant birds, unaware of the peril that awaits them and all of humanity, for the giant birds are a former earth species driven to extinction at the hands of thoughtless humans, and want nothing more than to exterminate the human race.

Meet Jason Durant

Jason Durant is the author of fantasy and paranormal novels. He has written two novels: Kiss da Wolf: A Novel and A Wound in the Earth: A Novel. These titles are available in eBook and paperback on Amazon. He has found inspiration from writers as diverse as Hemingway, Hawthorne, Poe, and Twain.

Living in Cleveland with the Ghost of Joseph Stalin

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It’s the summer of 1953. Calvin Jefferson Coolidge is thirteen years old when the ghost of Joseph Stalin appears to him in his Aunt Evelyn’s cluttered Cleveland attic and wants to dictate his memoirs to him.
“I want to tell my side of the story,” Uncle Joe tells him. “They’re giving me one year to set the record straight, so we need to get started right away.”
Calvin’s life is falling apart at the seams. He’s a misfit and loner whose only friends are famous dead people. He loves polka music and Westerns and sometimes wonders what it would be like to kiss a girl. His con man father is in Florida looking for his bipolar runaway mother. His cousin Buck is abducted and experimented on by aliens. The lady next door wants to coach him in the ways of love. His pastor thinks he’s headed straight for Hell. His English teacher thinks he’s a savant. The school psychologist wants to have him committed. His shrink thinks he’s just plain nuts. Sometimes, Calvin believes it too.
Everybody’s trying to figure out what makes Calvin tick in this quirky, fast-paced metaphysical romp through the heart and soul of 1950’s America.

Meet Marc Sercomb

Marc Sercomb was born in Salinas, California. He grew up in Southern California and attended California State University, Northridge, where he studied Journalism and English Literature. He currently resides in the foothills of Los Angeles with his wife, Robin. He has been a teacher for 23 years.

Sea of Glass

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Twelve-year-old Teo spends his days helping his drunken papá hang windows on shanties along Baja’s wild coast. When an old angler presses Teo to seek a goddess—the Sea Angel—for rescue, Teo sets out to test whether help can be found at the hands of the gods. To learn the truth, he must look beyond legends and summon the courage to challenge his papá. And to reach freedom, he must tap his own strength, hidden beneath wounds laid by glass.

Meet Tricia D. Wagner

Tricia D. Wagner is an award-winning novelist, poet, and short story writer. She grew up in Amarillo, Texas, chasing storms, riding stallions, sojourning through painted canyons, disappearing into floating mesas under starry skies.
She now lives in Rockford, Illinois (though the truth is, she’s a citizen of a dozen fictional countries.) Tricia works in education and lives day to day wonderstruck but luckily can feel her way about this terrifying, beautiful Earth through writing.
Tricia has pieces published in the Write City Magazine, Chicago Newa, Word of Art 3D, Literary Yard, and Midwest Review.

Providence Paranormal College (Books 1-5)

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At Providence Paranormal College, class is about to start.

Who’s enrolled? Students who are a bit different: vampires, werewolves, changelings, shifters, psychics, and magi.

For one-hundred years, the college has taught and trained only psychics or magi, and for the first time, it’s opening the doors to those not different: regular humans.

At this Ivy-League school, the students are expected to learn their powers and keep high grades.

Unfortunately, grades are slipping, but that’s what happens when a mysterious villain is hunting you down…

Because someone is angry about this new admissions policy and they’ll kill to stop integration. To defeat this rising evil, the students must band together and master their strange powers – because if they don’t..

Well, it’s pretty hard to graduate when you’re dead.

Includes the first five books plus four brand new short stories inside the college.

“I spent more than a couple of late nights reading through these stories to find out what was going to happen to my new friends!” – Michael Anderle, Best-Selling Author of The Kurtherian Gambit

This series is for fans of Harry Potter, Jaymin Eve, and all academy books.

Go up and click ‘Read for Free’ or ‘Buy Now’ and start reading today!