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The Boy from Kalimpong
This story is about a boy who grew up in Kalimpong at an approximate distance on a straight line as the crow flies 100 miles (162 kms) towards southeast of the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, amongst the Rong folks, Lepchas the autochthones, ‘Ronkup’, ‘Ronkum’, or ‘Rong’ people. Lepcha people designated as UN ancient tribe, native to the region; and their land ‘Mayel-Lyang’ once bordered further into Tibet, eastern Nepal, western Bhutan and as far south as Siliguri and Jalpaiguri in West Bengal and some parts of Duars than it does today.
Kalimpong part of Lepcha culture was the ridge where Mary and Nigel played happily with unabated joy until his sister, Mary Maung Taung Lai’s early, untimely death and Nigel Kenchinz Lai’s journey to America because of the impact of the 1960 Sino-Indian border war. Many Chinese Indians were stranded, declared stateless, homeless and their inability to get jobs in India caused them to move abroad. Nigel was fortunate to receive four scholarships, four from American universities and one from Canada.
Some parts of the story are true and some portions of this book have been developed that closely parallel the real events experienced by the author. The author and his sister were fascinated with the dragon ‘Thunder and Lightning’, where clouds burst into flashing lightning followed by a big thunder storm every monsoon season. Mr. Karamkurung was their common thread for connection.
Chris Ahoy was born in Kalimpong in 1939. He started at St. Joseph Convent, Kalimpong all girls’ school, co-educational school at Dr. Graham’s Homes, Victoria Boys’ School, Kurseong, St. Xavier’s College Calcutta (Kolkata), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur and University of California, Berkeley, California (UCB), where he received the coveted Regent’s Fellowship Award to complete his masters’ degree in nine months. Chris is a US citizen, served as Assistant Director and Campus Architect at UCB, Statewide Director for Systemwide of Higher Education in Alaska, Assistant Vice President Business and Finance and Director of Facilities Planning and Management at University of Nebraska central offices and finally Associate Vice President for Facilities Planning and Management at Iowa State University. Before retiring in 2010, his organization received the coveted State of Iowa, Iowa Recognition Performance Excellence (IRPE) 2009 Gold Award (State Baldrige Award). After retirement he continues to mentor and provide consulting in ‘Creating World-Class Organization’.
£37.99 -
The Blighted Road
The Blighted Road is a 17th-century story of two women’s harrowing journeys through plague and a brutal witch-hunt. Orla, renowned healer and mid-wife in rural England, confronts stillbirths and a mysterious, deadly sickness afflicting her community. The local superstitious people suspect these sinister events are the actions of the Devil. Desperate for answers, Orla’s investigation into past plague outbreaks reveal a shocking correlation with the harvesting of blighted grain. Her revolutionary findings lead to accusations of witchcraft. Meanwhile, Abigail, a young Londoner faces the horror of life in the plague-ridden city. After losing her family to the Black Death, Abigail escapes the locked gates of London. She flees on the plague road to Salisbury, which is fraught with danger and despair.
The separate tales of these women weave in and out as they reach a time and place where they are united by grief, loss and an uncanny will to survive.
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The Blackpool Landlady and Son
When 18-year-old Helen Ashton meets Joe McCarthy on the moors of Northumberland she instantly falls in love, certain that her humdrum life had taken a new turn. And for several years it did.
On the eve of the First World War, Helen learns that she is pregnant with Joe’s child, but before she can tell him, he enlists in the army and is despatched to war. She never heard from Joe again, and believed him dead.
When their son, Ben, was born, Helen, in mounting desperation, agreed to marry a retired police inspector with whom she had two children.
In time, her husband of convenience leaves Helen for another woman, and she finds herself on her own in the coastal resort of Blackpool with three young children with only a penurious future to look forward to. But fate intervenes, and with growing confidence Helen turns their home into a holiday hotel and begins welcoming guests. From one she learns that her beloved Joe had not died, but had been discharged into a sanatorium where he languished, a shadow of his former self, depressed, uncertain, confused … and lost, lacking the courage to reconnect with Helen.
By the time of Helen’s death, Joe is living a reclusive life, and his son, Ben, married with children of his own, takes over the Blackpool hotel. It is Ben’s wife, childhood friend Mary, who tracks down Ben’s father, finally persuading Ben to meet him … on the day Joe dies.
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The Awesome Lives of Tommy Twicer: Part One
The Awesome Lives of Tommy Twicer is my account of a secret that my bampy said must never be told except in time of dire emergency. Now is the time. I grew up in South East Wales in Penmaen near Oakdale in the Sirhowy Valley. Oakdale is a model village and it holds the most incredible secret that was wiped from the memory of all but a selected few. I am the latest of those few but now the secret must be revealed to maintain the integrity of a secret magical outpost named Abercwmzoo deep in the heart of the Sirhowy Valley from further development by Caerphilly County Borough Council. The story revolves around the amazing exploits of a very special young man who was born in Tuchola, Poland, on the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 1900. He was born Tomas Tomaschevski, a farm boy who had a dream. In 1914, World War One broke out and he left the family farm to make his fortune in Moscow but fate took him to St Petersburg and involvement in the Russian Revolution. He fled to Wales in fear of his and his sweetheart’s lives with the help of some heroic characters and makes his home in Oakdale where he assumes the name of Thomas. This is the first part of his awesome life in Poland and Russia up to his arrival in Wales. Please enjoy it and help save Abercwmzoo and preserve the beauty of the Sirhowy Valley.
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The Apricot Tree
The flames crept up the curtains like a swarm of tongues. They curled and stretched into the rafters, and like a marauding army, the flames swept across the roof.
Outside the Van Vuuren sisters watched this cruel act of war. The roof collapsed along with the Van Vuuren heritage and the Van Vuuren dreams.
In 1899 the mighty British Empire declared war on two small Boer Republics in South Africa. The war was expected to last a matter of months, but it took almost three years for the Empire to claim its victory. It changed lives, challenged loyalties and divided families. 28,000 women and children were to die in the British concentration camps.
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Tears on the Euphrates
In a harrowing story of lost innocence and shattered identities, two young lives are swept up in a storm of calamity and betrayal. An Iraqi child, ripped from the warm embrace of his family, finds himself in the clutches of strangers in a foreign country. While the boy’s desperate family searches tirelessly for their beloved son, the kidnappers weave a web of lies to erase his past, forging a cruel destiny that will test the bonds of fraternity and love.Against a backdrop of global unrest, the stolen child and his unexpected natural brother try to forge their own paths, tied by a deep friendship, in a world torn apart by violence and deceit. From the uncontrollable violence in Afghanistan to the turbulent waters of the Euphrates, the destiny breaks the sky with a story of love between two who would never imagine loving each other. Among the rubble, death and destruction, the deepest, most real and sincere love story is born. A love rooted in the soul and deep in the heart. Love that glorifies life and means death; the threads of family, love and loyalty will be stretched to the breaking point.Tears on the Euphrates delves into the profound impact of family and identity amid the harsh realities of a world at war, intertwining the fates of two boys with the turbulent geopolitics that define the divide between East and West. Through their eyes, we explore the moving and unyielding search for truth, belonging, and redemption in a world yearning for hope.
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Tales Of The Hove Amber Cup
During roadworks in Hove, a Bronze Age tomb of exceptional size was unearthed. Inside was an oak tree coffin containing the skeleton of a tall male, and accoutrements showing him to have been of high social status. There was a bronze dagger, an axe and a whetstone. Resting on his breastbone he held a cup, shaped like a modern item of breakfast crockery but with a rounded base. It was made of Baltic amber. Who was this person? Why was the cup made of amber so dear to him? Amber, that offspring of sunshine and trees, has the Baltic Sea as a godmother. How did he come by it? Was he a trader? How far did he travel? Did he bring home new ideas together with exciting spices and artefacts no one there had seen before? All answers can only be speculative conjectures. The cup having been found in Hove does prove though, that Albion had contact with the Baltic Sea. Tales of the Hove Amber Cup is a celebration of this 3000-year-old British treasure.
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Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2
Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2 is about the voyage Freddy and his mother, Helene, take to escape Europe and the ravages of World War II. After promising Sigmund on his deathbed that they would reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country, they make their way via ship to Colombia, the country Nellie had made her home just as the Nazi movement in Germany was gaining momentum. After their safe arrival, Freddy is forced to look for work in order to support his mother and himself while adjusting to new surroundings at the same time. After some fortuitous, work-related encounters, Freddy decides to not only run his own lingerie business but produce the raw materials he needs himself.
This is the story of how someone who was unable to complete school or go to university, due to strictly unfortunate circumstances, had the vision and skills to found a company that would provide jobs and well-being. Thus giving back to the country that granted him what the German Nazi government had taken away from him: his nationality.
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Survival: A Story of Friendship
It is a true story based on 13 years of research: the story of friendship between a Jewish boy, Freddy and his Christian friend, Helmut (who are separated by the political turmoil of the aftermath of the First World War in Germany), who obliged Freddy and Freddy’s family to seek refuge in France. It is also the story of friendship between Freddy and George, Freddy’s classmate whom Freddy meets in school in Paris. Moreover, it is also the story of Sigmund, whose patriotic blindness impacted his and his family’s life; the story of Nellie, who left Germany for Colombia before Nellie’s parents sought refuge in France and whose mission would be to reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country.
Furthermore, the novel also emphasises the emotional costs of the First World War and its indirect result on the onset of the Second World War.
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Stretto
Before she can be drowned as a witch, Elizabeth Robinson is swept away by the tide and the devil wind of Boston, Lincolnshire. She issues a curse on those responsible and declares that it will only end ‘when the birdman falls from the sky and into the mire’. Then, and only then will the evil in her descendants that is ever present will be finally defeated ‘and love will again prosper’.
The story traces the fate of the Robinson and Williston families through their time during the English Civil War and their uniting together in Boston, Massachusetts, two hundred years later. There is action aboard the Lusitania and Southern Ireland followed by a return to England and then the battlefields of France in WWI. The climax of the story occurs back in the USA after two heroes, Stephen Robinson and Bobby Williston, return at the end of hostilities only to be involved in a trial followed by an aerial combat.
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Stones of Destiny
One man’s greed can change the course of history forever…
FIFTH CENTURY BC, ATHENS
Humble sculptor, Nikodimos, toils away in his workshop to create a sumptuous marble masterpiece of Athena Parthenos destined for the Parthenon.
NINETEENTH CENTURY AD, ATHENS
Lord Quimby, blinded by greed, plunders the ancient Parthenon of its dearest treasures, watched by his helpless nephew.
PRESENT DAY
Young Cambridge student, Max Perceval, discovers a dark secret about his late ancestor and realises all is not what it seems in the Museum of Classical Antiquities.£16.99 -
Stigmata of Auschwitz Part 2
The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.
The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.
The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).
Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry, and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.
In Munkács, Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.
But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.
However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.
£17.99