Set on the Ruzizi River above Lake Tanganyika, Cicinski’s exquisitely crafted second novel is the story of an old Burundian fisherwoman who sets out to hunt and kill the legendarily large and vicious crocodile that killed her husband a year previously; and of her granddaughter, Lenka, who follows her in the hopes of protecting her not only from the dangers she faces in her quest for vengeance, but from losing the last vestiges of the woman she once was. Through the course of the hunt, Cicinski paints a vivid picture not only of a relationship between a young girl full of hope and optimism and dreams of the future, and an old woman who has been all but destroyed by grief and an all-consuming desire for revenge, but more broadly of the relationship between humanity and nature, the experience of grief and ageing, and the character of a strong woman who even in her darkest moments of despair refuses to be ruled by the expectations of her society.
Meet T.M Cicinski
T.M Cicinski is a British-born literary fiction novelist and short story writer, currently living and working in Granada, Spain. From Whence The Rivers Run is his second novel.
Lizbeth Shannon must escape Skid Row and stall her descent into madness.
But not before severing the trauma bonds shackling her to an early grave.
In the fall of 2005, devils chased Liz Shannon across nightmarish acres and deep into the bowels of hell. Not actual devils, only personal demons. And hell meant the seediest underbelly of L.A., where she walked among clever predators and outright ghouls. Discarded and homeless after her girlfriend, Dell—a hospice nurse—finally grew a spine and tossed the “energy vampire” out the door and smack into the jaws of the street wolves.
But Lizbeth isn’t really a vampire. Forget the pale skin, sharp bite, and a life spent roaming through the gloaming hours. Depraved conditions fell upon her early, as they do to many who end up deformed by circumstance.
And yet, an inexplicable bond remains between the two women—an otherworldly connection—a cord that cannot be severed, no matter the fraying threads. Still, Dell can’t root through the ugly places or prevent her love from hitting bottom.
Only Liz can battle the fiends and avoid the abyss.
First, she must dig her inner child from the ruins. But the weight of history hovers, like the sword of Damocles, eager to generate more debris—and crush them both to smithereens.
***This book, previously published as Dig Up Through Within, deals with mature themes of trauma and abuse.
★★★★★ “Masterfully written.” ~ J. Adams
Meet Katherine Carlson
Katherine Carlson loves to write about the perpetual chase. About outrunning and outwitting the demons, always closing the gap and ready to strike. She loves to hide her characters in gnarly trees and plunk them into hostile mazes. She remains obsessed with the transformative journey of survivors—lost in the woods or lost to addictions.
BRILLIANT, YOUNG AND AMBITIOUS, Annika Tritzchler defies the norms of 1930s Berlin by pursuing medical training in a venue traditionally dominated by men. Facing contempt from her counterparts is minor compared to the massive upheaval in a city transitioning to dictatorship while brutally persecuting its enemies.
Annika’s career takes a decisive turn when, early in her psychiatric residency, she is expected to participate in applied eugenics- the roguish trend within Nazi medicine. Sterilizing patients deemed racially inferior and euthanizing the handicapped (including patients that she, herself, has been treating) works against everything she holds sacred. Acquiescence means choosing survival over morality, the antithesis to the spirituality nurtured by her Lutheran mother and Jewish stepfather.
Brimming with historical detail, Fräulein is less a story of Nazism than a woman’s attempt to rediscover meaning after her sense of self was shattered by unimaginable trauma. Recapturing identity is central, but only if she comes to terms with guilt.
★★★★★
“There’s so much to love about this novel. It’s a fantastic historical fiction piece that explores a full life heading into the Holocaust and even a bit afterwards, and I love the texture and established setting within the timeline most of all. Leonards’ knowledge of the war accents the plot and allows the gritty realism to feel that much more sound. Annika’s character is quite accessible and well rounded. Her growth from beginning to end is remarkable to witness.” -Writer’s Digest
“Leonards successfully blends the horrific events of early 20th century Germany with the life story of Annika, whose search for meaning in life leads her into a career in medicine and beyond that into psychiatry and treatment of mental illness. The novel breathes life into many of the key issues of the era, including anti-Semitism, the mass hysteria of Fascism, and the totalitarian regime’s iconic institutions, the concentration camps and the euthanasia programs. Experiencing all of this, Annika tries valiantly to maintain her sanity as well as her sense of morality, and in describing her struggles Leonards has created one of the most unforgettable characters in modern literature.” -Jack Morrison, Ph.D. Author of Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women’s Concentration Camp 1939-45
“Amazing really what you have done… Ambitious and panoramic!” -Charles Rotmil one of Maine’s few living survivors of the Holocaust
“Fraulein is a masterfully written, psychologically astute portrayal of a young woman living and practicing psychiatry in a country descending into political and moral insanity, a chaos that consumes its intelligentsia and decent people, and that threatens to consume her own integrity. Filled with lyrical, almost transcendental beauty, and etched depictions of evil, Fraulein is both a gripping story and an unforgettable lesson from history that the gift of a civilized society cannot be taken for granted, but must be nurtured at every turn – it is the only thing saving humanity from the abyss.” -Jonathan Borkum, Ph.D. Psychologist and Author of Chronic Headaches: Biology, Psychology, and Behavioral Treatment
“Your fictional character, Annika, sounds like my kind of person…” -Tony Campolo, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Eastern University; public speaker; author of over 35 books; and former spiritual advisor to US President Bill Clinton.
How could one small piece of jewelry mean so much to so many?
Paige West is a well-educated, financially stable business owner who mourns the death of her father and misses the closeness she had with him throughout her life.
Jessivel Salter is a high school dropout who had a child out of wedlock at sixteen and is now a single mother on the brink of becoming homeless. She also misses her now-deceased father, but for very different reasons.
When fate unites the two women, Paige is drawn to Jessivel from the start and wants to help her. But Jessivel doesn’t trust Paige or her intentions and rejects her many “helping hand” offers.
When the two women eventually connect, certain disturbing truths are unveiled, and they discover they have something in common that is inconceivable and shocking. Each woman must decide whether to take the easy way out and part ways forevermore or face up to the adversity that fate has thrown at them.
And it all started with “the ring.”
Meet Florence Osmund
After a long career in the corporate world, Florence Osmund retired to write novels. “I strive to write literary fiction and endeavor to craft stories that challenge readers to survey their own beliefs and values,” Osmund states. Florence’s book “How to Write, Publish, and Promote a Novel” offers substantial advice for new and aspiring writers including how to begin the project, writing techniques, building an author platform, book promotion and more. Florence lives on a small tranquil lake in northern Illinois, where she continues to write novels and enjoy all that Mother Nature has to offer.
Terrified he’s becoming just like his father, Wyatt Lewis, a disillusioned millennial, breaks up with his fiancée to chase his childhood dream – a fresh start in Southern California.
Once in San Diego, Wyatt reunites with an old friend, Summer Harrison, while falling hard for the elusive and free-spirited, Leah Murphy. Summer and Leah show Wyatt a dazzling world littered with lavish speakeasies, egregious drug use, and overpriced cocktails. Surrounded by fake glamor and stuck in a terrible corporate job, Wyatt’s escape turns into his worst nightmare.
Overworked, alone, and filled with regret, the aspiring writer spirals down a self-destructive path that forces him to confront the violent past he ran away to California to forget.
In his raw, hilarious, and dark debut novel, Brian Price showcases our world, on the verge of the COVID-19 pandemic, through the eyes of a sarcastic and stubborn narrator as he attempts to drown his family’s demons.
Meet Brian Price
Brian Price worked in the marketing and communications industry for nine years. The Public Relations Society of America, American Business Awards, and Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals are a few of the organizations that awarded his work.
But who actually cares about that?
He certainly doesn’t.
Sick of bookshelves being stuffed with bureaucrats’ memoirs and snake-oil entrepreneurs using books as sales funnels, Brian wrote a novel, Last Chance California.
If he isn’t reading or writing, Brian is probably playing with his rescue pup, Bucky, or ranting about the government. He resides in Southern New Jersey
Award-winning novelist and cultural critic Strobe Witherspoon interrogates his own profession. It goes terribly.
“Wildly entertaining …Sometimes sad and sometimes hilarious, Witherspoon’s timely metafictional novel explores the ways (mis)information can shape public discourse in the digital media age.” – Booklife by Publishers Weekly
”Strikingly original …an innovative literary experiment that supplies a thoughtful commentary on the ‘discourse virus’ of our age …Witherspoon tackles a broad spectrum of media, including comically scathing excerpts from tweets, podcasts, blogs, and even academic journals and also keenly exposes the ways in which Strobe, the character, is implicated in his own online assault, due to his obsessive attachment to public life.” – Kirkus Reviews
OOF explores the role of satire in a society lurching from one ridiculous crisis to the next, where media outlets rely on clicks to stay alive and everything is filtered through a lens of anger and misinformation.
———— Strobe Witherspoon just sold his latest satirical novel for a lot of money. The book in question, FLOTUS: A Memoir, is a fictitious autobiography about a former first lady of the United States reflecting on years of misery at the hands of her much older POTUS husband. When a chapter is leaked in advance of the book’s publication, an Online Outrage Fiesta (OOF) ensues via news outlets, blogs, Twitter, troll farms, and everything in between. Witherspoon has his life placed under a microscope. Family secrets are exposed. Now, an anthology has been put together to document Witherspoon’s downfall—and settle the score. ————
”an impressive achievement of unflinching honesty from a noteworthy talent, as resonant and relevant as it is entertaining …OOF tugs at the threads that connect American cynicism with radical extremism and weaves a character-rich tapestry of insight …Each voice, whether of a New Yorker journalist or an Internet influencer, is rendered with uncanny fidelity. Perhaps most masterful is that key events are not depicted but merely alluded to, allowing the text to provide an elegant framework for a more personal story painted almost invisibly in the negative space.”– BlueInk Review
Meet Strobe Witherspoon
Witherspoon’s first novel, furtl, was a 2014 Kirkus Reviews book of the year selection. The absurd near future of that novel became not-so-absurd one year later.
The times were hopelessly dark. In a green land before time, all animals of the world laboured under the repressive rule of King Roar the Lion and the fierce Felines. Miaow, the timid and inconsequential chief of the cats befriends a fourteen-year-old mysterious explorer, Jack. These two unlikely heroes engage in the impossible struggle for liberty of the repressed animals. The conflict reaches its apogee with an epic but disastrous battle. Although the two protagonists were aware their survival was at stake, little did they know their enduring friendship would radically alter the destiny of the Animal World forever. This book will appeal to fans of “The Hobbit” and “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Meet David Bush
avid Bush is a medical doctor specialized in haematology. He was born in Malta but left for the UK when he was in his early twenties. He returned to his first home in 2003 where he still practices hospital medicine. He is the co-founder of a support group for patients with blood cancers. Since he gave up his private practice, he has had more time to spend with the family. He enjoys reading, swimming, travelling and doing any type of DIY job. Most of all, though, he cherishes the time he spends with his young great-nephews Jack and Luke. He has published many papers in international peer-reviewed medical journals. He also writes analytical opinion articles for a satirical political blog.
The Silver Baron’s Wife traces the rags-to-riches-to-rags life of Colorado’s Baby Doe Tabor (Lizzie). This fascinating heroine worked in the silver mines and had two scandalous marriages, one to a philandering opium addict and one to a Senator and silver baron worth $24 million in the late 19th century. A divorcée shunned by Denver society, Lizzie raised two daughters in a villa where 100 peacocks roamed the lawns, entertained Sarah Bernhardt when the actress performed at Tabor’s Opera House, and after her second husband’s death, moved to a one-room shack at the Matchless Mine in Leadville. She lived the last 35 years of her life there, writing down thousands of her dreams and noting visitations of spirits on her calendar. Hers is the tale of a fiercely independent woman who bucked all social expectations by working where 19thcentury women didn’t work, becoming the key figure in one of the West’s most scandalous love triangles, and, after a devastating stock market crash destroyed Tabor’s vast fortune, living in eccentric isolation at the Matchless Mine. An earlier version of this novel won the PEN/New England
Amanda and Matthew are on the cusp of their happily ever after. They have a stable marriage and a lovely daughter, and they are eagerly awaiting the birth of their second. Suddenly tragedy strikes and the couple’s picture-perfect life crumbles. Ivory, their firstborn child, dies in an accident. Not knowing how to deal with their pain, Amanda and Matthew blame each other for their loss and drift apart. They soon realize their relationship might not bear the burden, leaving their surviving daughter to cope with the aftermath of two grief-stricken parents.
A soldier fights for his soul in the trenches of France. A field hospital nurse battles death every day. Are duty and honor enough of a reason to go on in the hell of a world at war?
A mere mile from the blood-drenched front lines, Russian refugee and nurse Charlotte Braninov encounters English Lieutenant Robert Fitzgerald, who helps her save the life of another soldier. Robert’s calm, courtly manner lingers in Charlotte’s mind, a comforting memory amid the deluge of suffering that surrounds her when she returns to the hospital.
Wounded during an unauthorized mission of mercy, Robert Fitzgerald finds himself demoted to a Medical Supply Officer, where he once more meets the brave young Russian nurse. When Charlotte volunteers to help the Lieutenant learn about his duties in this new life of service, a quiet friendship blooms and love grows in that harshest of soils, even as the war rages on. But human cruelty and endemic disease claw at their lives. Can love survive in a world torn by warfare, greed, and deception?
The Old World, a novel that readers are calling “deeply moving,” “stunning,” and “magnificent,” is the first volume of the By the Hands of Men series. Epic historical fiction by Roy M. Griffis, the saga sweeps across four continents in a gripping tale of fate, loss, redemption, and love.
A truly remarkable historical novel– so finely rendered in period detail – that the reader becomes one with the plot and characters. – RICK FRIEDMAN, FOUNDER, THE JAMES MASON COMMUNITY BOOK CLUB
