Infiniti

Like many other books, this book is about a journey. But unlike other books, the destination of the journey is the point where the parallel lines meet. The narrator is locked inside the book. The only way he can get out of it is by persuading one of the other characters in the book to finish off the writing process for him. But before he can do this, he has to make a journey.

On his travels, there are a number of waypoints where he must stop and collect materials which are pasted into the book. When the book is completed, he can leave the book by delivering it to the individual whom he will meet at the point where the parallel lines meet.

This journey, which is accomplished across his lifetime, takes him from the birth of Christ to the near future, with the author bending time by complex double time schemes, riddles and mathematical formulae. Every waypoint appears incredible at first, but we are in the world of weaving narrative into fiction but not fantasy. Every one of the waypoints is historical fact.

There is no trickery. The narrator does indeed take us to the point where the parallel lines meet. It had been staring at us in the face all along.

Insanitus

Make it to resemble a man

Sans emotions of any kind

Ignorant of pain and pleasure

Cold: bereft of heart and soul

One to kill at my command.

From  ‘PANDORA’

Isaiah’s Mountain

May 1901. Jo stands alone, ready to meet her fate, as British soldiers come thundering up the dusty track of her farm. She has not raised a white flag, it is pointless; the British are burning homesteads to the ground. Choked by the acrid smell of farmlands and livestock, blazing in the valley, Jo struggles to find her voice and the words she needs to save her home.

A strange twist of events transports Jo back to a time when, as a young teacher in the tiny Karoo town of Kweek Valley, she was drawn into the troubled world of a boy named Lukas Bester. A time past when nothing was as simple as it seemed and the truth lay silent and festering beneath the surface of the pious community. A time when she was Joanna Shepherd, an entirely different person…

If she is to survive, Jo has to find the words which uncover the truth as she navigates her way through grief, betrayal and the violence of war.

It's About the Living

Every reader becomes a part of this story. Charles Benford is a very ordinary man who finds himself called upon to make the kind of choices he is not equipped to make, choices that nobody should ever have to make.

Read it and perhaps think how you would have done things better or just differently given the time scales involved. Or become one of any number of the people who occupy the centre stage of the book for a chapter or two. Perhaps it is a memorable character; someone easy to recognise as part of ourselves or someone we know. Experience their fears and emotions as they flit across the pages, enduring pain, grief and, for some, death. For others, there is a huge feeling of guilt, mixed oddly with love and happiness.

This book will leave you intrigued and will make you want answers. But most of all, it will make you think.

Jack Wolf

You will be brothers, you will see death and destruction, you will be expected to run into fire when every other living thing runs away, you will work long shifts, days, nights, Saturdays, Sundays, high days and holidays, Christmas days and your birthdays. You will be injured and burned, and don’t kid yourself it won’t happen to you, it will. And consider this: On average two firemen are killed each year in service. You are expected to do this job for thirty years. Nobody wants to pay you decent wages, they will tell you that you sit around all day, play snooker and squirt water for a living. You will be like Cinderella… you will live, eat and sleep behind the red engine house doors and when called to serve, when the fire bell rings you will answer their call, their fear and their alarm. You will risk your life for a stranger, someone you never knew or will ever know and when the alarm has passed, when you are exhausted and done, you will return to the fire station, close those red engine house doors behind you and lick your wounds.

We are their insurance; they never want us, until they want us, then briefly, briefly, we are heroes.

Joint Enterprise

On a winter’s night, in a grubby alleyway, in a northern town, Josh, a 17-year-old A Level student, is found stabbed to death.

The police investigation soon focuses on the four people who were in the alleyway with him that night – Josh’s girlfriend, Naomi and three members of a local gang, involved in drugs and violence.

The three gang members are charged but the police start to look more closely at Naomi. New evidence emerges which seems to point to Naomi.

Could Naomi be complicit with the gang? Is she a victim or a suspect? Or are the police looking in the wrong place? Soon her lawyers become Naomi’s only hope of a life beyond this nightmare.

An emotional exploration of the impact of a murder on family and friends combined with the roller coaster ride of twists and turns which make for a high-profile criminal investigation and trial.

Journey to a New Life

This is a story about the long and traumatic journey of two hard working Irish families at the time of the great famine and potato blight in Ireland in the mid nineteenth century when the country was governed from London and the poor were suffering greatly from starvation and disease.

The Doyle and the Gill families both became victims of the arrogant and ignorant son of the local landlord and magistrate and were forced to leave the land of their birth.

In different ways they suffered on the first sea leg of their respective journeys to the port of Liverpool in England where they became united.

They decided that their eventual destination was Canada and to achieve that dream they had to earn enough money by working for an extended period in Liverpool and industrial Lancashire.

Finally, they travelled by sailing ship to Canada. How would they fare? Would their dream eventually come true?

Jupiter

The story of Isaac Marcu Moritz and the great affliction of his childhood caused by a lightning bolt launched by Jupiter, god of the sky, the father of gods and men, and the patron of Rome. 

The bolt kills his aged mentor whose knowledge of history and languages is transferred to the traumatised mind of the boy. He is plagued throughout his life by visions and torment of Rome’s ancient rulers and gods.

Growing up on the family farm his skill in the capture of flies by hand learned by watching his grandmother’s action while at the packing table leads to success in rural land sales and a posting in a university entomology research program of hand-fly-capture. He establishes Snap-Zap-Solutions with the aim of eradicating the pestilence to improve the human condition.

Will he ever understand himself enough to empathise or forever live in abeyance wondering who or what is really driving his life?

Just Outside This Room

This book of poems was partially written while I was quarantined courtesy of the Covid-19 pandemic in Henan Province, China.
A stay that was prolonged to seven and a half months.
The myth and mystery of human experience evoked by being alone, finding myself on the edge of no return. The vulnerability, sudden solitude, struggles in a lifetime, consolidated in meditations, poems and reflections.
Most of the poems are spiritual in context, some just free thoughts.
My nephew’s take on this book of poetry was: ‘If you thought through the poems, then I will read them.’
I am very thankful and humble for this unexpected and unique opportunity, a journey of lifetime.
I am also looking forward to sharing this adventure in mind and spirit with you.
Michael Hovi

Kertamen

A front-line game of cat and mouse between cops as tough and cunning as the conspirators – a murderous, satanic cabal intent on influencing the 2014 Scottish referendum. Kertamen is a fast-paced thriller involving recurrent darkness, some moral dilemma and portal-stepping into Jerusalem in 30 AD, seen primarily through the eyes of Detective Inspector Chuck Kean of the Drug Squad. Kean is running a deniable investigation into a masonic cabal among the Edinburgh establishment, who are allegedly linked to child abuse. His team soon experience various unanticipated twists including the discovery that the background on the faction is an intricate one with links to Rosslyn Chapel and a migrant Templar, Adam de Gordon.

The clandestine investigation quickly becomes entangled within the foundation roots of a much bigger political conspiracy encased within the 2014 Scottish Referendum. Martone resurrects the political climate, passions and concerns of the voters, whilst cannily revealing a conspiracy, akin to that of Dallas in 1963, lurking within the shadows. Connections to the oil and the arms industries, whose peripheral strategies are somehow aligned with the cabal, develop while Kean discovers that he is involved in an age-old supernatural struggle between seraphs and fallen angels. One angel – Dai, mentors Kean in what develops into his own moral quest, after revealing to him that the referendum, along with other events around the globe, are all the chess games of the divine.

King's Spur

Occasionally Emily could see the glint of the river, some thousands of feet below before the clouds closed in again and she was forced to stop, breathing heavily, the shotgun still clutched to her swollen stomach. 

She tried not to look down, putting her faith in the good Lord.

But the good Lord had better keep out of her way until she had finished what she had to do that night!

Kirna

Do you believe in reincarnation? Maybe you will after reading this tale.

KIRNA links the modern with the ancient in a tale of mystery, kinship, love, betrayal and vengeance.

The story connects two time periods and two key players – Sam and Prince Suryaveer; read on to discover the many adventures they experience.