Lorena Junco Margain—passionate art collector and devoted wife and mother—is already shaken after abruptly fleeing Mexico and relocating in the USA with her family while pregnant due to safety concerns. Then, she learns she has a tumor on her adrenal gland. Having long experienced unexplained symptoms of dizziness and lethargy that neither medications nor holistic or Ayurvedic treatments have helped, she embraces the news with tears of relief: with a simple surgery, she can regain her strength and joyful spirit. But fate can be mischievous, and to err is human—even for surgeons. Rather than improve after surgery, her condition worsens.
On the Way to Casa Lotus is the gripping true story of Junco Margain’s journey coming to terms with the permanent consequences of a surgeon’s devastating mistake. Mindful that even good people make errors and that vengeance would not mend her broken body or soul, she chooses instead to embark on a quest for peace and healing—beginning by seeking space in her heart to forgive.
Finalist Narrative Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
In 2020, ISIS followers are being encouraged to use COVID-19 to sicken Westerners. An ISIS supporter attacked a Naval base in Corpus Christi, Texas. Iran and the United States exchanged blows in Iraq. We are still living in the long shadow of the Iraq War.
In 2006, David Grantham was fresh out of college and serving as a counterintelligence officer with the elite and secretive Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Iraq was veering toward civil war. The U.S. military desperately needed better on-the-ground intelligence to turn the tide. Grantham found himself in Kuwait and Afghanistan, then at Iraq’s infamous American prison, Camp Bucca. Not only was Bucca the breeding ground for the Islamic State, it was in southern Iraq, where America’s deadly fight with Iran was an open secret.
Consequences is both a riveting behind-the-scenes look at intelligence operations at the height of the Iraq war, and a charming and sobering story of one man’s journey through the pleasures and consequences that come with wartime intelligence.
Finalist Narrative Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
In Growing up Joplin, Kadesha Powell vividly brings to life her obstacles and triumphs while being raised in a predominantly white, Midwestern town. The constant struggle with racism and deep-rooted microaggression in the educational system, workforce, and her personal life, chipped away at her self-image. For far too long, she allowed others to shape her identity and limit available opportunities.
After moving to the East Coast and traveling internationally, Powell learned the meaning of acceptance and self-love. A range of cultural experiences allowed her to see the beauty of the world around her.
Growing up Joplin is the emotional journey of a feisty, energetic, and talented Black woman, who has bloomed into something much more than she ever dared to dream possible.
Finalist Narrative Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Nearly 30 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes every day — that night, Jennifer was one of them.
On Shattered Wings is the powerful story of the people left behind and their powerful life lessons for us all, an unforgettable true story of a family’s struggle to survive overwhelming sorrow amidst ongoing unexpected and startling events. Along the way, they discover the value of faith, the insignificance of regrets, and the realization there can be joy again through harnessing pain into healing action for themselves and others.
Finalist Narrative Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
So your husband is going to die. Now what?
Some Assembly Required chronicles the 10-month adventure of a couple living through the worst of times like it's the best of times. It's a story about having heart when what you really need is a brand-new liver.
"Full of wit and positivity, Some Assembly Required is a poignant memoir and the perfect book for anyone who has experienced the unique blessings and trials of caretaking a loved one." –Marnee Blake, award-winning author and RITA® Finalist
Finalist Narrative Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Russ and Nicole Bell were an upwardly mobile happy couple: two kids, big house, fun hobbies, marvelous life. But something wasn't quite right-with Russ. He started forgetting things, he got lost, he became enraged, he was harsh with the kids. And he could no longer be trusted with minor responsibilities.
They visited doctor after doctor after doctor to try to determine what was wrong, to no avail. "Alzheimer's," they were told, but that didn't make sense. Russ was too young for that. As the formerly brilliant engineer literally lost his mind and his self, the answer finally became clear-but was it in time?
2021 AML Creative Nonfiction Winner 2021 International Book Awards Finalist 2021 Author Elite Finalist
What happens when an ambitious girl grows up to be a mother?
Maleah thinks being a stay-at-home mom makes her inferior to women with paying jobs. Plagued with unrelenting thoughts of inadequacy, she struggles to heal from postpartum depression without medication. Her search to save her body, her marriage, and her family leads to an unexpected revelation.
Lies of the Magpie sweeps readers into the heart and mind of an accomplishment-driven woman who worries that being a mother isn’t enough. Flowing with humor, witty observation, and sensitivity, the narrative escorts readers to a surprising epiphany of the liberating and healing power of motherhood.
A man hunted by the Nazis long after the fall of the Third Reich. In this stranger than fiction true story, Carl Katz contends for survival against a relentless enemy.
In this much anticipated sequel to the bestselling, Roses in a Forbidden Garden: A Holocaust Love Story, Never Enough follows the defiant, German-born, Katz as he navigates Hitler’s Germany. We shadow his harrowing life and death journey—from his years of incarceration, starvation, and torture, to his desperate plays to keep his family safe from the deadly grasp of Hitler’s Final Solution. Forced to make vital decisions at every turn, his unwillingness to succumb sparks outrage and vengeance from his would-be executioners.
With the perpetrators of his past continuously pursuing him, Katz learns that old habits certainly die hard in the Fatherland.
This is the story of an American C-47 ‘Dakota’ pilot who earned three Air Medals, seven Battle Stars and flew twenty-seven combat missions during the Second World War. As a young U.S. pilot, Harry Watson, arrived in Britain as the Battle of Normandy was reaching its crescendo. Thrown immediately into the fray, Harry, along with more than 200 aircraft, set off to carry supplies to the troops fighting in France. But with visibility reduced to zero, the aircraft were ordered to turn back – all did except Harry, who successfully delivered his life-saving cargo of blood and US Army nurses.
Harry continued to take risks, which resulted in many hair-raising episodes. This included almost being caught on the ground, while on an urgent fuel resupply mission for a platoon of General Patton’s tanks, by a German Mk.IV panzer and a battalion of supporting infantry.
I Had A Secret for Seventeen Years is the redemptive life story of Tori Shaw, centered around her abortion as a teenager. She spent years covered by guilt and shame while enduring continual abandonment and rejection. Childhood experiences taught her to hide hardship, so she silently dealt with depression, fear, anxiety, self-loathing, and addictions. After hiding her dark secret for seventeen years, Tori shares her story with the world. A woman who once walked in fear and self-doubt is now willing to go wherever God wants her to go. Through Tori’s story, God builds a ministry that helps abortion-minded women choose life for their babies and shares God’s forgiveness and love with post-abortive women. I Had a Secret for Seventeen Years enables the reader to see a post-abortive woman come full circle and embrace the world of possibilities God makes available to those who are willing.
In 1999, a 49-year-old woman tended her garden outside of the Chicago suburban home she shared with her husband, daughter and pet dogs. Extended family lived close by. She had a job that she loved. Life didn’t get any better than this. One phone call changed everything.
A random blood test had just revealed that she had hepatitis C. She’d never heard of it before. Not only did she have it, but it had been swimming in her bloodstream for 30 years, contracted from a blood transfusion in 1969. Tests would reveal that her liver was engulfed in chronic active liver disease – almost cirrhotic. Hepatitis C in 1999 was a degenerative, often incurable and deadly disease. Something had to be done.
The only treatment at the time offered less than a 50% chance for cure and came with a plethora of nasty side effects. It was a yearlong regimen of chemotherapy that could trigger flu-like symptoms. And those patients who didn’t respond to this difficult protocol frequently found themselves immunocompromised when it was over and sicker than before. The “wonder drugs” were still a long way off.
While waiting 15 years for a cure, Labar Laskie took extraordinary measures – except the chemotherapy – to keep her symptoms at bay, calm her fears, and lift her spirits. Above the Din is her story.
A couple of grizzled old geezers leave for a months-long RV trip in February 2020.
But they are about to hit a bump in the road.
Gerri Almand and her husband Michael have been living part-time in their RV for years. She has gone from a reluctant RV wife to a deep appreciator of the open road, so when it comes time for their next trip, she knows she’s ready.
Enter Covid-19.
When the pandemic breaks out, their return home becomes impossible. They must run for their lives to elude the dreaded coronavirus, and they do what any logical senior couple would do…
They sell their home and embrace a full-time RV life.
They spend six weeks in a nudist RV park, chase after Dennis Hopper’s ghost in Taos, deny themselves a Koi fishing expedition in Cripple Creek, learn the art of the ‘wike’ in Leadville, survive a snowstorm outside Colorado Springs, stroll across the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, and nestle in the desert in southern California as the pandemic rages.
Running from COVID in Our RV Cocoon is the humorous true story of one couple’s paradoxical journey of both losing and finding freedom during Covid-19. It is packed with helpful tips to becoming full-time nomads and offers the complicated truths of what it’s like to live in an RV during a terrifying pandemic.
