Contemporary Fiction

The English Heart

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The English Heart
Title: The English Heart
ASIN: B077BCKKX2
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Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBk389
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Author's Twitter: @helenahalme
A stylish 1980’s Cold War love story based on true events. Young Finnish student Kaisa falls head over heals in love with Peter, a dashing newly qualified naval officer. Kaisa realised she’d never felt like this before. This was love. The stuff she’d read about in books since she was a teenager; the films she’d watched. This was how Ryan O’Neal felt about Ali MacGraw in Love Story, and Barbra Streisand about Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Kaisa grinned. She’d wanted to pose the same question to the Englishman that Katie had to Hubbell, ‘Do you smile ALL the time?’ ” When a young Finnish student, Kaisa, is invited to the British Embassy cocktail party in Helsinki to celebrate a Royal Navy visit to Finland, she’s not looking for romance. After all, her future has been carefully planned: she’s to complete her degree, marry her respectable, well-to-do Finnish fiancé Matti, and live happily ever after. Enter the dashing Peter, a newly qualified naval officer. Like a moth to a flame, Kaisa falls head over heels in love. Kaisa and Peter embark on a long-distance relationship, but at the height of the Cold War, while the Englishman chases Russian submarines, Kaisa is stuck in Finland, a country friendly with the Soviet Union. Can they trust each other? Can their love go the distance? A stylish 1980s Nordic love story based on true events.

Assessed for Awesome Indies (Previous title: The Englishman)

 

 

 

Walking with Elephants

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Walking with Elephants
Title: Walking with Elephants
ASIN: B006BG7G90
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Published: November 17, 2011
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBk093
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Bridget Jones meet Erma Bombeck — Walking with Elephants, a lighthearted slice-of- life story, brings to the table the serious work/family issues facing women today.   Suze Hall is at a crossroads. Her nemesis at work, Wanda, has been promoted and now will be her boss. Her husband, Bob, is leaving her and the three kids for a six-month sabbatical down under. To top it off, her best friend, Marcia, is missing in action–playing footsie with some new boyfriend!   Adding to this disaster stew, David, the gorgeous hunk who broke her young-girl’s heart has coincidentally popped back into her life and has something she desperately needs to keep her job. Walking with Elephants, a lighthearted slice-of- life story, brings to the table the serious work/family issues facing women today. It explores the modern dichotomy of a workplace that is filled with homemakers who still must cook, clean, carpool on nights and weekends, shop for prom dresses, and “create” the holidays–such as Suze. But it also is filled with women who have the same drive as men, have no family responsibilities, and will do what ever it takes to get ahead. So step into the shoes of Suze Hall and commiserate over workplace politics, titillate your sexual fantasies, ride the wave of a working mother, and fall-down laughing.

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Now That We’re Adults

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Now That We’re Adults
Title: Now That We’re Adults
ASIN: B01FL8MIJ6
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Published: September 6, 2016
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBK306
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Author's Twitter: @PlaidCoreLynn
A group of geeky 20-somethings in Scranton, PA, struggle to form post-college identities without alienating each other in the process. When happy-go-lucky Wade is dumped by his longtime girlfriend, he’s left to wonder whether she might have a point about his lack of ambition. Needing a distraction from the heartbreak, he begins programming a video game, which soon becomes a passion project as he strives to prove he can follow through on his own. Meanwhile, his brother Ian barely has time for games now that he’s overloaded at work and struggling to connect with pregnant wife Kat, who’s starting to doubt whether she wants a baby at all. In fact, without the shared experience of college, their entire friend group is splintering. Needing his friends more than ever, Wade becomes obsessed with turning back the hands of time. But with everyone’s hopes and expectations so tangled up, it might take an outsider—someone like painfully shy librarian Eleanor—to provide some much-needed perspective. That is, if she could get out of her head long enough to risk making a connection.

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Among The Branded

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Among The Branded
Title: Among The Branded
ASIN: B06XSYWYL2
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Published: May 2, 2017
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBK303
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Author's Twitter: @lindasmolkin
What if a 70-year-old letter from World War II changed the course of your life? While attending Valor of the ’40s, art director Stephanie Britain stumbles upon a flea market selling letters from the war. She buys a handful, hoping they’ll inspire the redesign for a client’s website at her branding and design firm. At first, she’s drawn by the lost art of penmanship, but soon discovers a hidden treasure nestled inside declarations of love from homesick soldiers. Stephanie enlists a coworker to translate one and realizes it’s not a love letter after all. When a shocking discovery about a client causes Stephanie to question her principles and dedication to her firm’s business, she’s forced to make a difficult decision—one that could give her peace of mind, yet ruin her career in the process. Contemporary fiction with a historical touch, AMONG THE BRANDED explores family life, an unexpected friendship, and moral conflicts that make us wonder what’s more important: our livelihood or our beliefs.      

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Then She Was Born

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Then She Was Born
Title: Then She Was Born
ASIN: B01N214BWU
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Published: January 9, 2017
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBK298
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Then She Was Born is more than a novel. It's an international human rights awareness campaign supported by eleven Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis. Based on an inconceivable reality for many in the world today, Then She Was Born combines the drama and redemption of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner with the spirituality of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. A child is born and the joy of her parents turns to horror. The child is different, in a way that will bring bad luck to their superstitious community. The tradition should be for her to be abandoned, but Nkamba, the grandmother, is allowed to care for her. Naming her Adimu, Nkamba raises her as her own. Adimu is constantly marginalized and shunned by the community, although her spirit remains undiminished and full of faith. But when she encounters the wealthy British mine owner Charles Fielding and his wife Sarah, it is the beginning of something which will test them all. As Charles Fielding's fortunes wane, he turns in desperation to a witch doctor whose suggestion leaves him horrified. But as events begin to spiral out of control he succumbs to the suggestions and a group of men are sent on a terrible mission. The final acts, of one man driven by greed and another by power, will have a devastating effect on many lives. Cristiano Gentili's glittering prose and vivid imagery will have you captivated from the first page.

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A Dog’s View of Love, Life, and Death

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A Dog’s View of Love, Life, and Death
Title: A Dog’s View of Love, Life, and Death
ASIN: B06XGKSBM4
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Published: June 5, 2017
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBK300
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In A Dog's View of Love, Life, and Death, human beings, content they know the answers to life’s big questions, continue making the same mistakes time and time again. Dogs, being their closest non-human companions, and knowing a little more than humans think they know, assist them discreetly with their evolution of consciousness. After spending twelve years paralyzed from the neck down, Seamus McGarry can’t quite believe he’s communicating telepathically with a dog named Rosie. Millionaire Will Roper is living the life and feeling in control of his destiny. But his anger issues are landing him in hot water. If that isn’t enough, Saddam Hussein, his dead mother’s dog, and a man living in a doorway have all crossed his path. Things will never be the same again. Old-timer Lennon, a Harlequin Great Dane, New York, born and bred, feels life is passing him by. That is, until a dog shows up at the shelter and helps him understand his existence here isn’t quite what it seems. Dolores Fanon, a recovering addict, has been clean and relatively serene for 3 years. However, life’s just dealt her a low blow. She’s struggling to cope, and when a psychic working for the N.Y.P.D. appears in her life, secrets from the past come flooding into the present.

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The Flower Seller

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The Flower Seller
Title: The Flower Seller
ASIN: 0993446302
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Published: 2 Jun. 2016
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBK290
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Author's Twitter: @EllieHWriter
Jessie Martin believes that when it comes to love there are three types of people: the skimmers, the bottom dwellers and the ones who dive for pearls.  Jessie is a pearl diver. She had thought her husband William was a pearl diver too. But when William leaves her for a much younger woman, it’s not just Jessie’s heart that is broken, her ability to trust is shattered too. All Jessie wanted was a love she could believe in. Was that so much to ask?  Loyalty it seems has gone out of fashion. Refusing to retire from the battlefield of life, Jessie resolves to put her heartache behind her. She doesn’t want to be that woman who was too scared to love again. There has to be another pearl diver out there; all she has to do is find him. Urged on by her sassy best friend, Anne and her daughter Hannah, Jessie makes three New Year’s resolutions: get a divorce, get a promotion, get a life. Enthusiastically embracing her new start, Jessie sets about making all her resolutions come true. When fate brings handsome flower seller Owen Phillips into her life, will Jessie have the courage of her convictions? Can she take her heart in her hands and give it away again? Hope springs eternal they say but a bruised heart needs to time to heal. Will Owen have the patience to understand? Will Jessie be brave enough to take that leap of faith? By the time summer holds her firmly in it’s warm embrace, Jessie’s monochrome world of heartache has been transformed into one full of colour, romance and love. Jessie can hardly believe her luck.  Can Owen really be the one? All things seem possible and even husband William’s attempts to bully Jessie into a less than fair divorce settlement don’t have the power to upset her as they once might have. Supported by Owen, Jessie stands her ground. Putting William’s deceit and betrayal firmly in the rear view mirror of her life, Jessie is full of hope for the future.  Perhaps loyalty and true love haven’t gone out of fashion after all. When autumn’s burnished hues colour the world around her, Jessie looks forward to cosy nights by log fires with her handsome flower seller. But is Owen really the pearl diver Jessie had hoped for? Or is Jessie’s fragile trust about to be shattered all over again? The Flower Seller is an engaging and page-turning read full of love, deceit, betrayal and hope. This romantic tale follows Jessie from the depths of winter, to the excitement of spring through a hot and passionate summer to the turmoil and drama of a stormy autumn. As a second winter approaches and her world is once more turned upside down, will Jessie ever find a love she can believe in with a man she can trust?

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Feast of Mercy

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Feast of Mercy
Title: Feast of Mercy
ASIN: B01N0AN553
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Published: November 7, 2016
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBK289
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Author's Twitter: @KathrynMHearst
Nick never wanted to live forever, and he certainly didn’t want to join the Order of the Sinistra Dei. Unfortunately, before he’s able to get used to the idea of immortality, the High Judge from the Vatican arrives in New Orleans to investigate the strange events of Fat Tuesday. If Nick doesn’t play his cards right, his forever could be a whole lot shorter. Marin, a relatively new immortal, hasn’t had time to settle into the idea of living forever, and she doubts she ever will. When she’s forced to assist the High Judge in his investigation, she’ll do what she has to do to protect her clutch. However, her efforts bring her closer to facing the executioner’s blade. As their world spins out of control, Marin and Nick struggle to reconcile past hurts and hold onto their budding relationship. With new enemies, new abilities, and new desires threaten to tear them apart. It isn’t long before they realize … Loving someone means you want the best for them...but what happens when what’s best isn’t you? Feast of Mercy is the third book in the Sinistra Dei series. If you like mysterious supernatural creatures, conflict-ridden romance, and a lot of heat, then you’ll love this Urban Fantasy series.

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Riding the Dog

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Riding the Dog
Title: Riding the Dog
ASIN: B00PJL7WDS
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Published: November 12, 2014
Short link: http://j.mp/AwesIndBk242
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Riding the Dog is a collection of nine short stories that all take place on a Greyhound bus. Strangers collide in cramped spaces. Secrets are told to nameless seatmates in the dark of the bus in the middle of the night. Two strangers exchange trinkets, unaware of a past that connects them. A woman crisscrosses the country looking for her brother who disappeared in New York City on 9/11. A soldier returning from Iraq with PTSD finds unexpected solace in the chaos of a broken-down bus. A down-and-out musician loses his most treasured possession on a deserted West Texas highway. Riding the Dog explores an often-invisible world – the world of a desperate, funny, resilient, heartbreaking America.

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