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The Mad Days of March

The Mad Days of March
Title: The Mad Days of March
ASIN: B092TQCTWP
Published: April 17, 2021
Author's Twitter: @PhilipCatshill
This is the daily diary of Terry March whose single act of kindness leads to a month of madness and mayhem. After helping an old guy dispose of a blood-stained carpet at the local tip, Terry rescues his old TV remote and while driving home, he uses it to zap phantom aliens! This leads him to an encounter with Police Sergeant Susan. His new resolution to be helpful leads to his first opportunity to be unfaithful to his wife of nineteen torturous years. A soon-to-be divorced Lauren offers her favours to thank Terry for his kindness, but Terry declines the invitation. Within days, another opportunity arises, and Terry can’t convince himself that those phantom aliens haven’t spirited him away to a parallel universe. Before that first week is over, Terry faces redundancy from his mundane job at the local council. In order to tackle the backlog of paperwork, the council employs a temporary typist, Ashley, who closely resembles Terry’s 19-year-old daughter, Megan. Terry’s wife, Brenda disappears and Carol, her twin sister moves in. When a body is found in his garden, Terry is arrested for murder and Carol adds to his torment by accusing him of rape! While in a police cell, Terry encounters further problems as Lauren’s police sergeant husband is the custody officer! But all is not lost! Police Sergeant Susan persuades Carol to withdraw the charge and mysteriously, that old guy from the tip makes a deathbed confession to the murder! But the mad days of March are not yet over. Ashley disappears. Terry’s daughter Megan suffers traumatic memories from her past. Lauren’s house is set ablaze, and a mysterious detective Dave is concerned that Megan too has disappeared! All this in a month of the Mad Days of March! Warning: Sexually explicit content. For adult reading only.

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

 

Never Say I Can’t (… after stroke)

Never Say I Can't (... after stroke)
Title: Never Say I Can't (... after stroke)
ASIN: B006HSNVO6
Tags: , ,
Published: December 3, 2011
Author's Twitter: @PhilipCatshill
“Never say I Can’t” is the gripping, humorous, and occasionally devastating first-person account of a serving police officer, who at 30 years of age, suffered a major stroke. In his own words, Philip Catshill recounts his battle against the odds to survive, to recover, and to succeed. "I don't know what the ambulance man did with my bucket. Where did the medical staff put their faces? Mine was in the bucket. It made sense to me. The doctors called it CVA. A few called it a stroke. I laughed. I thought it was a joke!"

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Ripple: A Tale of Hope and Redemption

Ripple: A Tale of Hope and Redemption
Title: Ripple: A Tale of Hope and Redemption
ASIN: B00GDSV7M8
Category:
Tag:
Published: November 16, 2013
Author:
When high-powered attorney Helen Thompson discovers that her husband has abused their fifteen-year-old daughter and plans to use her in a sex ring, she takes a golf club to his head. And she doesn't stop there. With the last of the perpetrators still at large, Helen escapes with Phoebe to a safe house, where a team of lawyers and therapists help them begin the painful journey to healing. But even surrounded by safe walls and good people, Helen's desperate efforts to save her daughter may not be enough. A dark, gripping, but uplifting read, Ripple handles sensitive material with compassion and conviction, ultimately weaving a tapestry of healing that celebrates the human spirit.

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Treasure Me

Treasure Me
Title: Treasure Me
ASIN: B004XMOP9I
Category:
Published: April 19, 2011
Petty thief Birdie Kaminsky has arrived in Liberty, Ohio to steal a treasure hidden since the Civil War. She’s in possession of a charming clue passed down in her family for generations: Liberty safeguards the cherished heart. The beautiful thief wants to go straight. She secretly admires the clue’s author, freedwoman Justice Postell, who rose above the horrors of slavery to build a new life in Ohio. According to family lore, Justice left South Carolina at the dawn of the Civil War. Heavy with child, she carried untold riches on her journey north. As Birdie searches for the treasure, she begins to believe a questionable part of the story: a tale of love between Justice and Lucas Postell, the French plantation owner who was Birdie’s ancestor.

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Can’t Live Without

Can't Live Without
Title: Can't Live Without
ASIN: B0083SJB4M
Categories: ,
Publisher:
Published: May 15, 2012
How does it feel to lose everything you own? Single-mum Stella is proud of the home she’s created for herself and her teenage daughter. But when she wakes one morning to find her kitchen on fire, Stella knows her life will never be the same again ... With a boss she’s half in love with, a daughter about to go seriously off the rails, a spendaholic mother, and a house to rebuild, Stella’s problems are only just beginning. Can Stella put her life – and her home – back together again? And will she ever realise just what it is she really can’t live without?

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Wild Water

Wild Water
Title: Wild Water
ASIN: B004JF4LHK
Category:
Published: November 24, 2013
Author:
The tragedy and comedy that is Jack's life; secrets, lies and family ties. Jack Redman, estate agent to the Cheshire set. An unlikely hero, or someone to break all the rules? Wild water is the story of forty-something estate agent, Jack, who is stressed out not only by work, bills and the approach of Christmas but by the feeling that he and his wife, Patsy are growing apart. His misgivings prove founded when he discovers Patsy is having an affair, and is pregnant. At the same time as his marriage begins to collapse around him, he becomes reacquainted with his childhood sweetheart, Anna, whom he left for Patsy twenty-five years before. His feelings towards Anna reawaken, but will life and family conflicts conspire to keep them apart again?

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Across the Mekong River

Across the Mekong River
Title: Across the Mekong River
ASIN: B008KQAGA0
Published: July 11, 2012
In a California courtroom, seventeen-year-old Nou Lee reels with what she is about to do. What she must do to survive. She reflects on the splintered path that led to this moment, beginning twelve years ago in 1978, when her Hmong family escaped from Laos after the Communist takeover. The story follows the Lees from a squalid refugee camp in Thailand to a new life in Minnesota and eventually California. Family members struggle to survive in a strange foreign land, haunted by the scars of war and loss of family. Across the Mekong River paints a vivid picture of the Hmong immigrant experience, exploring family love, sacrifice, and the resiliency of the human spirit to overcome tragic circumstances

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White Horizon

White Horizon
Title: White Horizon
ASIN: B0088WO0VM
Category:
Published: November 12, 2013
Author:
Three couples in crisis, multiple friendships under pressure. On-off-on lovers Daniel and Tina return to their childhood town. After twenty-five years together, they marry in typically chaotic fashion, witnessed by old friends, Victoria and Linda who become entangled in the drama, their own lives changing beyond recognition. However, as all their marriages begin to splinter, and damaged Victoria begins an affair with Daniel, the secret illness that Tina has been hiding emerges. Victoria's crazed and violent ex-husband attempts to kill Daniel and nearly succeeds, in a fire that devastates the community. On the eve of their first wedding anniversary, Tina returns to face her husband, but is it to say goodbye forever, or to stay?

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Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans

Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans
Title: Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans
ASIN: B004L2LG56
Publisher:
Published: 1 Oct. 2010
When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, chef and widower Simon Fortier knows how he plans to face the storm--riding it out inside his long-time home in the city's Treme neighborhood, just as he has through so many storms before. But when the levees break and the city is torn apart, Simon disappears. His son, Julian, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, rushes home to a New Orleans he left years before to search for his father. As Julian crisscrosses the city, fearing the worst, he reconnects with Sylvia, Simon’s companion of many years; Parmenter, his father's erstwhile business partner and one of the most successful restaurateurs in New Orleans; and Velmyra, the woman Julian left behind when he moved to New York. Julian’s search for Simon deepens as he finds himself drawn into the troubled history of Silver Creek, the extravagantly beautiful piece of land where his father grew up, and closer once again to Velmyra. As he tries to come to grips with his father's likely fate, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of his father and the city he loved so much, while unraveling the mysteries of Silver Creek.

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards