San Diablo, The Devil’s Haven

They had all heard the rumours about the place of course, but they had dismissed them as jailhouse myth and bullshit, a place where the prison doctor would pronounce you dead, and you would disappear from heart and memory, and enter into Hell on Earth as the warden’s guest in San Diablo the devil’s haven.

The Devil’s Haven is set in the middle of the baking hot desert. Hidden far from public view and scrutiny resides the top-level, top-secret super-max correctional facility, a warehouse of sorts for the very worst of the worst of humanity’s dregs and gangsters, those sentenced to death for their heinous crimes, those that no one would miss.

Through twists and intrigue, it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems at San Diablo, neither is the hyper-sadistic warden, nor his new guest the bizarre and enigmatic high-profile inmate en route to the hell pit, or the mysterious CIA super agents entirely as they seem at the Devil's Haven, San Diablo.

Sanjog A Novel

1946, Dehra Dun, India. The Radcliffe line is drawn and the largest mass migration in history is taking place. 1960, Nairobi, Kenya. A young man is starting a new life as an immigrant Indian with his young family. 2017, Halifax, Canada. A society wedding is bringing family, friends and foreigners together who have not seen each other for years. Three countries, two rivals, two female abductions. Set against a backdrop of post-partition India and Pakistan, 1960s' Kenya and modern-day Atlantic Canada, this tale follows the story of two families, united by heritage, torn apart by hatred. It retells the tragedies of partition violence and the fight to restore human dignity when all is lost. The story of families ripped apart and long-lost buried secrets finally culminate in an outpouring of pent-up grief and injustice that must be avenged. The plight of two women, bound together by history, yet torn apart by time. Sareeta desperately trying to reunite her family against the tides of bygone generations and migration. Gori trying to claw her way out of a poverty, inflicted on her by circumstance and revenge. Women so similar and yet so wildly apart that the idea of any reconciliation seems to be beyond reason. Accented with family recipes handed down through three generations, Sanjog - A Novel will take you back in time to one of the most turbulent events in human history and bring you through a story of love, malice and redemption.

Scarlet Sealwax

Scarlet Sealwax is a collection of twenty-eight introspective poems focusing on the essence of human relationships. In fact, it is the concept of idealized love that permeates this collection. Under the dystopian circumstances that we are currently experiencing as a species, idealized love, no matter how utopian, is looked upon as an emotional condition resulting from self-awareness, self-respect, honesty and unconditional (yet fully conscious) devotion to one's beloved, with whom one may happen to be lucky enough to experience a wholesome connection at all levels: spiritual, emotional and physical.

To the mind of the poetess, it is only through the experience of whole-hearted love and devotion that the transfiguration of the self, the miraculous rebirth of one's soul and, hence, fulfilment and bliss, are attainable. What also emerges is that self-actualization, in all respects, will only be possible if one is prepared to shake free from intentionally fabricated misconceptions about what is right and what is wrong. It is to break, to shatter, I dare say, the “rusty moulds” of what has been falsely established as “the norm”. This is actually just a set of poisonous and mutilating stereotypes, maiming people’s thoughts, deeds, dreams, potential and their whole lives.

Scintillata Nee

Scintillata Nee is an extraordinary, experimental volume of verse by young author Cynthia Tenor. While the poems take the reader through the development of a personal relationship, the text is expressed in highly unusual terms: words are often chosen for their sound and/or etymology and rather than for their more obvious meaning. Strange and imaginative coinings of new words are dotted throughout the text, while many of the poems also include deliberate archaisms to evoke the history of English literature.
The collection ends with a handful of original Greek poems (along with their English translations), reflecting the author’s background.

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.

Sea of Tears

The Keeper of the Dead protects all souls; living and dead.

Newly named Keeper of the Dead, Sondra Carstairs, senses a new threat to the remote Atlantic island of Anona. When a soul reaches out to her from deep within the formless energy of the veil, Sondra receives the confirmation she needs. For when this soul walked among the living, he was a powerful Man of the Sea and her father.

Then Livy Talbot, Sondra’s cousin, arrives on Anona and the threat is revealed: an enemy of the Keeper with the ability to command the sea into a deadly storm. To keep her cousin alive, Sondra follows her instincts—and her father’s guidance—and banishes the storm. In doing so, she reveals her own strength to this faceless islander that sends storms easily from the shadows.

When this islander reveals an additional ability to steal another’s soul, Sondra has to figure out who this islander is—and why they are determined to push Anona into the Land of the Dead, from where none will return.

Seasons of Freedom

Robert Allen ‘Bubba’ Armentrout is an adventurous youngster, experiencing everything life has to offer in the 1960s’ rural community of Freedom, Virginia. His life is rich with loyal companions, exploits, carefree days and a burgeoning sexual awareness.

This tranquil normality crumbles when what begins as an innocent childhood predicament of Bubba’s own making transforms into his witnessing of a salacious encounter between two of Freedom’s most revered citizens. A chain of events that results in multiple homicides exposes him to the dark underbelly of his hometown and shatters his sense of safety and serenity in Freedom.

Only Bubba knows the truth behind these murders, and that truth is deadly. Seasons of Freedom is a coming-of-age mystery set in a politically fragile rural Southern community in the culturally volatile 1960s.

Secret Island - A New Dawn

In this sequel to Christopher Hayes-Brown's book Secret Island, the High Lord Amon of Atlantis devises a plan to rebuild and recolonise an Earth which has suffered a complete environmental collapse. While Amon himself stays behind and travels across Atlantis, a series of ships undertake the dangerous journey into an unknown world. Prince Oliver and Prince Artorious are on board the lead ship. As they head towards the continent of Africa, what will they discover?

Secrets in the Attic

Dame Henrietta Copeland in her new role as private investigator finds herself outsmarted by thieves at the local garage sale, when she attends incognito, is wrapped up in a curtain and delivered to a cliff edge, left to perish.

And while it seems like a wild goose chase, she is stalked by an associate of a suspected murdered/suicide victim, who seems to be getting hot under the collar with Henrietta’s enquiries.

She is constantly reprimanded by the magistrate for overstepping the boundaries of the law, while solving cases.

Her devoted family are appalled to find she is befriending an ex-prisoner, the very person who forced her to sell her beloved paddle wheeler after being disgraced for wildlife poaching on the Mighty River Murray.

Undeterred by adversity Henrietta travels to Perth in Western Australia, to assist her prisoned nephew and unwittingly discovers a diamond heist and to Mount Gambier in the Southeast of South Australia seeking a stolen herbal rose formula and inadvertently while sipping tea on her way back to Goolwa, through the Coorong, uncovers a love nest, the cause of an infidelity which she had refused to uncover at the beginning of her new career. There is personal tragedy when news breaks out of the sinking of the paddle wheeler Beatrice Lonsdale, formerly Laurel Wreath which had been moored at Pier 15 on the Goolwa wharf.

There are surprises and disappointments as Henrietta strives to make a living keeping secrets in the attic.

Secrets, Lies and Butterflies

Butterflies – beautiful creatures which conjure up images of hot summer days. But not these butterflies. Grimsby, June 1943, butterflies brought death and destruction to the town. An evil anti-personnel bomb tested for the one and only time on this Lincolnshire fishing town.

Grimsby is at the heart of this book, and by following two families through WW2, we follow the journey the town took alongside them. Lawrence Street was where they lived, a quiet cul-de-sac not far from the docks. Jessie and Tom Williams, their sons Frank and George, and daughter Peggy. Next door lived the Tomkinsons, Bert, Marion and their son Joe, known to everyone as Ratty.

By the end of the war, Tom and Bert are successful businessmen, brought about by George and Ratty and a remarkable find they made as messenger boys during the blackout.

Into this mix is added the local spy, Hairnet Jackson, who had his own particular reasons for betraying his country, and his mysterious disappearance after the Butterfly Raid.

The Americans arrived and Lt Col Elroy Baker stood centre stage and directed operations.

All these threads weave together while the butterfly bombs unleash their terror. Were they all found and destroyed?

The last page answers the question… Secrets, Lies and Butterflies! 

See You In Ezra Street

See You in Ezra Street captures the dramatic uncertainty of a young woman striking up new roots, dealing with her love affair, while absorbing the dramatic lessons from her grandfather’s life in colonial India.

Born and raised in Sweden, the introverted life of Tanushree Roy Choudhury, a young music scholar with Indian roots, takes a dramatic turn when she suddenly gets strong hallucinations about her family’s past and starts searching for answers. Answers which her parents had always left unknown. Her research takes her from Berlin to London, where she again meets Joshua Salisbury, a shy and secretive physicist she had not only met once before, but whose eyes she was never able to forget. When by chance the two of them find out that their grandfathers – despite their different religious and cultural backgrounds – had been close friends and classmates in Calcutta in the early 1900s, they continue Tanushree’s search together. The revealing and candid diary entries, photographs and correspondence that Joshua’s family has kept teaches them about differences in values embracing religion, nationality, obedience to elders and romantic rivals in the lives of their grandfathers Isiah Cohen and Debendranath Roy Choudhury. They soon see themselves confronted with not only a hidden and to them unknown love affair, but also with the heavy impacts of war-split India on their close ancestors’ lives – deaths in the family and losing one’s home – startling events which even after seven decades have an impact on the present.

Selah - Encounters

This book is a collection of the writer’s thoughts and expressions. Written during a tough time of COVID 19 lockdown, the writer has put on paper an internal dialogue. Hopefully she can share these with you the reader, encourage you, as she has found solace. Her message is, take heart, even during these increasingly challenging times, be hopeful.
In every difficulty there is often a glimmer of light, that will come through even when it appears darkest. This collection of thoughts is hopefully that place where you can sit within the sentiments of the writer and be strengthened and encounter that glimmer of light. And just when you least expect, there will appear joy, peace, courage and a new perception, even in the midst of life’s current challenges and uncertainty.
This book is a reflection in the stillness and how from this sense of isolation and disruptions can create a blossoming of the peaceful “lotus flower”. Beauty can arise again!
Selah