With Love from Your Friends

This is the story of a young chap that simply thrives on the title of being a ‘complex individual’. He belongs to a spectrum of unique difficulties in which he will only ever feel at one with his own existence. He only shares this situation with a handful of friends.

But wait, there is nothing typical about this bunch that is kept locked away for the purpose of one young man’s version of a five rainy minutes, as mother nature intends to weave her marvel. But is this maverick builder truly in control within his own world as he roams the pathways upon an undecided destiny? Only one way to find out.

When Two Lives Collide

In 1953, Major (Old Bob) Ferguson, a soldier recently blinded on duty in Kenya, relates his untold story to a ten-year-old village lad, Mike Gilbride. In 2012, Mike, his days fast closing in, is seeking final catharsis as he relates both their colourful tales to Teddy, his only grandson. Family lies, treason and death flourish. Eventually, their lives collide.

Wanderer of the Wild

At 23 years old, Avery had achieved the things expected of her. An education that led her nowhere, a dead-end job that paid the bills and a boyfriend her parents loved. When everything fell apart and her mental illness got the best of her, she gave up all that she had worked for and left home in a beaten-up car.

Together with her two dogs, savings that were quickly draining and a heart full of anxiety, Avery left behind a life of familiarity for a life on the road. Through endless miles of driving and hiking, she finds that the soul can heal, and that happiness can be found in the most unexpected places. In the beautiful embrace of nature, she discovers what it feels like to be free, realizes the burdens and the marvels of this privilege, and breaks the chains of the things that once held her back.

As she welcomes some of the most breath-taking sights in Europe, she learns the hardship of living in a car and the weight of solitude, the strength it takes to survive out in the wild and the benefits it can give to the brave. Along the way, she comes to terms with her past and makes new friends, falls in love and is faced with heart-breaking loss.

Walk the Line

Walk the Line is a story about how we got here, both personally and politically, told through the lives of its main characters – Sam, Michelle, Philip, Mary, Ed and Carol. It opens in the summer of 2005, in the week of the 7/7 bombings. These have a profound impact on Sam especially as he struggles to understand what they mean and their implications for the way he’s lived his life.
The narrative follows its characters’ lives from 1968 – the most turbulent and traumatic year of the ’60s – to 2008, when the world was caught between the hope of Obama’s election and the unfolding abyss of the financial crisis.
People change and memories blur with events and the passage of time. Relationships develop and bonds between them strengthen until, at the end, they are confronted by a discovery that forces them to question much of what they believe in.

Unwelcome Legacies

Fragilities exist in all families, but some families are much more fragile than others…

For a quarter of a century, Anna Johnson went about her life believing that she had gotten away with her affair with Bill Williams. However, when he dies and leaves a small fortune to the younger of her two sons, the money and other dark secrets lay bare the fragility of her own family as members start to lose sight of all common decency.

By definition a legacy is a gift of property or money left to someone in a will. In the broader sense it can also be something received or transmitted from the past. Anna has made nothing in the way of any financial gain, but the legacies of her past are revealing themselves thick and fast – threatening to destroy her marriage, her family, and her whole life.

Unlikely Destinies

As part of a small Australian military group three sisters of immigrant parents participate in secret missions to counteract People’s Republic of China coercion and planned terrorist attacks in the Indo-Pacific. The sisters enjoyed a happy but meagre childhood in a remote West Australian township from where they emerged as the fortuitous beneficiaries of a private school education in South Australia. They displayed exceptional talents in standard and elective subjects. As young adults they excelled in tertiary education and gained degrees in linguistics, admiralty and Pacific constitutional law, pure mathematics, and computer science before coming to the attention of Australian intelligence agencies and the military. They were recruited by the military group for clandestine assignments that ranged from the outer boundaries of the South China Sea to Papua New Guinea and in between. The main parts of the story are about these assignments.

Under the Shade of the Mango Tree

Inaya – the daughter who knows her father to be dead.

Imaad – the son who has persistently betrayed and disappointed his father.

Zahra – in search of the man who saved her childhood and protected her mother.

Salmaan – An autistic youngster who finds it difficult to navigate himself in the big, wide world.

Today.

Inaya – The news of her father being alive shatters her existence completely as she is left with an air ticket and a damning decision. 

Salmaan – Her brother, autistic and confused escapes through an unlocked front door and discovers a world that is cruel and far from safe.

Imaad – A drug dealer on the brink of uncertainty drowning in a sea of betrayal and animosity.

Zahra – Finders not keepers of the man who changed her life and future.

Then, one moment, a fatal incident rips their souls apart and transforms their landscapes forever.

Under the Desert Sands

On honeymoon, an archaeologist couple, Toby and Lucy, meet an emergency on Lake Nasser. A man, Hassan, was being attacked by a crocodile. Can they rescue him? Will he survive?

Leaving the lake for the Western Desert and its oases. They go to Kharga and have a wonderful party. A fantasia entertains them with whirling dervishes, Nubian dancers and pipes of hashish being handed around. Then back on to the White Desert, a “Wonder of the World”. They get stuck in the deep sand and freeze in the cold night; dug out, a surprise in the hole left by their rear wheel.

Is it what they hope? Is it part of a temple? Is it an archaeologist’s dream or just a lump of stone?

Lucy bewitches a colonel in the Baharyah Oasis; he brings manpower to raise the block. Suddenly, the edge of the deep trench crumbles and sand and rubble collapse into the hole. What will become of the young couple?

Two Watches

“My second watch. I want it back now,” he said to me on the phone. No greeting, straight into it.

He ended the call soon after. I hung up and was quite distressed. His confusion was getting worse. Was this the onset of dementia? Would I ever have a proper conversation with him again?

This was the last conversation Will had with his father James. While it made no sense at the time, a chance discovery made while cleaning out his father’s apartment opened up a whole new part of James’s life that Will had not known, filled with adventure and new relationships.

From Lithuania in 1991, and the backdrop of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Vilnius, we travel with Will all the way to the present day through his own family’s history as he learns more about his father and in turn, more about their own relationship. 

Turn A Blind Eye

When Craig Walters discovers his widowed mother is dying, he puts his dreams on hold and accepts a position at a small private bank in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. For Craig, the steady income offers a chance to regroup. However, his indoctrination into the banking world quickly deteriorates when believing he’s stumbled upon an elaborate fraud scheme. His covert digging into the bank’s files for confirmation promptly sets off alarm bells that reverberate around the globe and unwittingly lays bare a more in-depth, sinister plot.

Linking Melbourne with modern-day Irish politics, and the unlimited power and reach of the Vatican, an intricate web of corruption and unbridled greed is spun, that entwines all that come in contact.

And whether to Turn a Blind Eye becomes a matter of life and death.

Truth Will Find a Way

Set in Mayfair, West London, Truth Will Find a Way finds a group of friends whose private lives are as unconventional as those of the Bloomsbury Set. The group’s lynchpin, Lady Monica Montford, runs the Gayton Art Gallery, a central meeting place for the friends when they visit the capital. The interweaving of their personal relationships is as complex as a game of chess; will they all remain on good terms?

Truth and Lies

Shabana hailed from a conservative Muslim background of old Delhi. If she chose to go by the norms, she would have to settle for an arranged match, accept purdah as her lot and crush her ambition. She knew that the times had changed, her icons were Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg, she wanted to make an impact.

Rajat, a film producer, won National award for his film, Zindagi. He was on the lookout for a young actress for his new production, Mulaquat, based on first war of independence of India. Ajit owned Perkin’s Publisher by default. He wanted to time the release of a biography with Rajat’s new film, in which he wanted to portray him as Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. Shabana used her natural talent to be both, Rajat’s heroine and Ajit’s author, in spite of the restrictive clauses of her contractual agreement with them. The war between Rajat and Ajit got dirty, which resulted in murder, suicide, changes in the fortunes, public protests and far more. What happened to Rajat, Shabana and Ajit and those who were affected? To know all, read an edge-of-your-seat thriller, Truth and Lies.