Simone’s Choice

Imagine you are in a bar celebrating your birthday and your freedom as a newly divorced man when your eyes meet those of a stunning blue eyed blonde. The connection is instant and electric. Finally, after such a long and desperately hard road, could true love be within your reach?

This is deeply personal and moving true story written by author David John Baird about Michael, a 51-year-old professional, and the torrid and steamy romance that nearly destroyed him and his belief in finding the “one”.

In this semi-biographical romance thriller, Michael meets Simone, a bubbly Italian on the eve of her return to Singapore. They exchange numbers and embark on a cyber romance of Skype dates and instant messaging. He is over the moon when she announces she has a job in Sydney and is moving to be by his side. Their romance is passionate and raw, honest, and deeply authentic. The story, in Michael’s words, is an insightful account of his thoughts during their flourishing romance.

However, the constant interruption by Simone’s ex-boyfriend Marco arouses his suspicions and what happens next, no one could anticipate.  

Siblings

A journey of a brother and sister who were abandoned by their parents and put in a care system. This seems to go well at first, until they are put forward for a foster placement, which goes downhill very quickly afterwards. 

Siblings is an engrossing family saga that you won't be able to put down. 

Shaded Memories

A heart-warming story about friendships, love, intrigue, and the search for a missing woman. Set in Manchester, Spain and Devon, we meet Mary Reynolds, a lady who has dementia. But, behind the illness is a person, and the story follows her interesting and eventful life, starting in the 1940s.

A novice care worker, Patsy Bennett, has the natural insight to see beyond Mary’s dementia, and sets out on a path of learning more about dementia, so she can help Mary to find happiness once again.

For anyone wanting a positive read about dementia, plus an interesting story, this book dispels some of the myths about the illness. Drawing on the author’s many years of studying and working with people with dementia, the book tells the story of an intelligent, resourceful woman. A woman who is still the same person she always was but who, in later life, has lost her identity.

Sentinels

Isabella Krakowska set out on her quest to becoming the person she was born to be.

But, do dreams ever come true?

Do ambitions ever satisfy the soul?

Does love really exist?

And who, or what, are the sentinels? What part do they play in Isabella’s life as she struggles through the mire of her misfortunes and climbs the rough peaks of her life, in an attempt to conquer her own Everest?

Will Isabella be finally released from the chains of her past or will she forever remain a prisoner?

Send the Healer

Ben had always harboured hopes of becoming more than he was, but nothing could have prepared him for this sudden leap forward. Up until recently, it was him watching others helping the sick where he worked, but now he had the power to do far more than all of them. He could actually take away people’s cancer or diabetes in an instant. The only problem was, he had never healed anyone before, and the person who had given him this power was a complete mystery.

There was only one thing he could do: he was going to have to take a leap of faith. This would mean putting his trust in a person he didn’t fully know. It would mean running the risk of losing all his friends. On top of all that, it would mean facing enemies who were determined to stop him at all costs.

No-one ever told him that believing would be easy, but he would never have imagined it would lead to this much adventure or such a stunning conclusion.

Semper Fee

Semper Fee, set in an old-line Boston law firm, is a ribald comic novel about greed, infidelity, betrayal, and worse. Unfolding through two distinctive first-person narratives, the novel explores the entwined but wholly different lives of two partners, Andrew Millard and Eliot Lawrence, rivals since childhood.

In their differing ways, the covetous Millard and Eliot, the aging Eagle Scout, betray or simply take for granted the women for whom they’ve so strenuously competed. However, it is the women who advance and deepen the narrative, delighting, tormenting, illuminating, and invariably controlling the two men. Essential to the lives of both are the incomparable Clare Lawrence and her subversive daughter, Ceci.

Semper Fee lays bare the joys and humiliations of desire and tallies the cost of choices made or not made by its two central characters in a claustrophobic universe of unsavory shenanigans.

Second Chances

Jordan, Florence, Zoe and Madelyn's friendship is put to the ultimate test when a terrible tragedy is revealed. How far will these women go to prove their loyalty? And will they take matters into their own hands? Each one of them is on a journey of their own, hiding secrets they believed had been firmly left in the past. But all is uprooted again when they decide that helping a friend in need is the right thing to do. In the end, they must face their own demons along the way. Each one of them will determine their destiny and what truly matters in life. True friendships are hard to come by. When you do find it, you will surely know, your sisters will take a bullet for you.

Scrabble Babble Rabble

Four prison inmates are thrown randomly together during recreation time, to play scrabble, with the added zing of occasionally telling stories about a word on the board. The stories reveal their characters and histories, but the scrabble itself is a mere transient remission from the vagaries and harshness of prison life, which continues unabated around them and through them.

We are party to a voyage through calm settled waters of support, camaraderie and story-telling, to storms of violence, abuse and abject despair in a rigid, alien and unforgiving environment. We feel the emotions of the highs and lows of prison life through the victimisation, determination and hope of our players, who ultimately all show resilience in one way or another.

It is a fable about humanity, garnered with wit, insight and encouragement, with a little whodunnit? thrown in for good measure.

School Ties

England, 1945: while still a boy, Paul Elliott loses his parents in a car accident. Whisked away to West Yorkshire from his home in High Wycombe, Paul finds a new home with his father’s brother, Don, the headmaster of Oxton House, a small preparatory school. Despite some setbacks, Paul quickly encounters academic success, setting him on a trajectory that will see him become, by his mid-twenties, Don’s presumed successor at the school.

In the ensuing years, as he begins to build Oxton House into a thriving, modern school, Paul will experience highs and lows in both his professional and private life. His troubled marriage to the captivating and capricious Catriona start rumours that will threaten to overturn Paul’s reputation and destroy his career.

School Ties’ authentic and engaging insight into the prep. school world of a different era owes much to the author’s own experience as a headmaster. The book’s narrator, Paul, is an intriguing combination of humility and ambition, keen to do his best but sometimes his own worst enemy. The novel abounds in well-drawn, often quirky characters, from pushy parents to eccentric colleagues. In particular, Paul’s uncle Don is wonderfully portrayed as a kindly pedagogue, who relies more and more on the loyalty of his nephew as the story unfolds.

Ripe Dreams

Teme is an embodiment of that recurrent news footage of a young unaccompanied migrant rescued of yet another capsized boat on the Mediterranean Sea. Surviving the treacherous Sahara Desert then the raging sea was not the end of his battles though. Final destination in Norway, the past with a stranglehold, future uncertain the likes of Teme face adulthood, migration trauma, cultural shock, toxic comfort zone all at once while being shadowed by the long arms of the law.
With Toure his partner in crime, a loving local girlfriend, an objective child psychologist appearing intermittently in his life, would Teme shake off his troubled past or would he let the darkness consume him…?

Retroland

Retroland is an illustrative look back at the lifestyle and popular culture of the 1970s and 1980s Britain with a humorous twist. From fashion to music, television, toys, computer games and more – dive in, have a laugh and roll back the years with this collection of cartoons.

Reincarnation For Beginners

Happiness is all about being who you want to be and believing in who you think you are. In the plot of Reincarnation for Beginners, there are brave souls who pursue this goal no matter what others may think or say about them!

In this story there are those who reinvent themselves or actually believe themselves to be Elvis, Gandhi, Napoleon, Florence Nightingale and Marilyn Monroe.

This book is a revolution of a read. Go on the march brothers, sisters, and everyone else. Find yourself and then flaunt it!