Tomorrow Is A Long Time is an intertwining of two stories, both exploring the boundaries of romantic love and the consequences of pushing those boundaries. It tests preconceived notions of age, fidelity, and sacrifices made for love.
Literary Fiction
Clad in Armour of Radiant White
Award: Awesome Indies: APPROVED
Categories: Coming of Age, Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Author: Rosaline Riley
This is a coming-of-age novel set in the 1950s and 60s in Lancashire. Its point-of-view protagonist is Ellen, a working class girl who becomes friends with middle class Erica when she goes to the convent school in the neighbouring town. Focussing on both Ellen’s home life and her school life (which she tries to keep separate), the novel explores the gains and the losses that education and religion provide over the course of her school years. Thematically, it’s a novel about friendship, love, loss, and death. Social class is also dealt with lightly. There are dark passages in the novel, but also much humour. Each chapter is a month of the year – beginning with September to reflect the structure of the school year. This framework also allows for treatment of the seasons and the liturgical year. The months are sequential but the years are not. Between September 1959 and September 1966 the years go back and forth (with some flashbacks to earlier years).
Assessed for Awesome Indies
To Do the Deal, A Novel in Stories
Award: Awesome Indies: APPROVED
Categories: Literary Fiction, Short Stories
Tags: career, commission sales, family, Fiction, humor, Literary Fiction, Short Stories
Author: Cathy Baker
This humorous career and family drama will captivate anyone who has ever held a job, lived in a family, or been on either side of a sales transaction. To Do the Deal, A Novel in Stories is about the quotidian — the challenges, minute dramas, and endearing moments that make up the every day. Set in a suburb of Washington, DC, To Do the Deal sets its focus not on the power brokers that dominate the nation’s capital but rather, on one family that is muddling along. Through ten stories, one each set in the years 1991 through 2000, we follow Kenneth Bodine on his quest to make a decent living in commission sales. We also follow his wife, Jodi, who tries hard as wife, worker, and mother and who often gets it right but just as often overthinks. To Do the Deal will appeal to readers who like witty stories, well told; who appreciate carefully plotted narratives; and who want to be entertained by an ensemble cast of deftly drawn characters. The language is literary yet light: readers who put check marks in the margins next to lines that resonate will mark a lot of pages. Beyond the appeal of its writing, To Do the Deal will captivate anyone who has ever held a job, lived in a family, or been on either side of a sales transaction.
Assessed for
The Retail
Award: Awesome Indies: APPROVED
Categories: Contemporary Fiction, Humor
Tags: comedy, comic novel, Literary Fiction, romantic comedy, satire, work-life balance, workplace romance
Author: Joshua Danker-Dake
Aspiring writer Penn Reynard has just joined the ranks of America’s fifteen million retail workers: fresh out of college with an English degree, he can’t find a job anywhere except at the local big-box hardware store. Working returns, Penn experiences firsthand the often comical absurdity, chaos, and shenanigans of the retail world. At least he has a new romance with a coworker going for him—if he doesn’t screw it up. The constant pressures of dealing with hostile customers, oblivious coworkers, and overbearing management begin to take their toll on him, though, and as his desired career path threatens to fall out of reach, Penn struggles to break free of retail’s clutches.
Assessed for
The First Noble Truth
Award: Awesome Indies: APPROVED
Categories: Literary Fiction, Metaphysical & Visionary, Women's Fiction
Tags: Book Club, buddhism, Hair Pulling, Japan, Lesbian, Literary Fiction, love, Mental Health, Philosophy, Religion, travel
Author: C Lynn Murphy
Machiko Yamamoto pulls out her hair, picks at her skin, and triple checks the locks to the house behind the school where she works. When a foreigner moves into a neighboring thatched roof cottage, she quickly falls in love with the quiet woman with the mangled hand. Machiko Yamamoto pulls out her hair, picks at her skin, and triple checks the locks to the house behind the school where she works. When a foreigner moves into a neighboring thatched roof cottage, she quickly falls in love with the quiet woman with the mangled hand. Krista Black does not mind the weekly visits from the local English teacher. The scarred woman seems harmless, but she always wants to talk about travel and language and why Krista has come to the remote, Japanese village. Krista avoids her questions. She has seen much of the world, and she knows what it does to fragile people. Machiko may want to know her, but she could never understand her. Set in Kyoto, New England, Africa and Kathmandu, The First Noble Truth is a story of redemption, interwoven between two protagonists, across two cultures. It peers beneath the comfort of expected storytelling to investigate the dualities of suffering and joy, religion and sex, and cruelty and kindness.
This title is no longer on sale.
Assessed
The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky
Categories: Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Seal of Excellence Recipients
Tags: Alternate History, Alternate World, Literary Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Traditional Fantasy
Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
Author: David Litwack
After centuries of religiously motivated war, the world has been split in two. Now the Blessed Lands are ruled by pure faith, while in the Republic, reason is the guiding light-two different realms, kept apart and at peace by a treaty and an ocean. Children of the Republic, Helena and Jason were inseparable in their youth, until fate sent them down different paths. Grief and duty sidetracked Helena’s plans, and Jason came to detest the hollowness of his ambitions. These two damaged souls are reunited when a tiny boat from the Blessed Lands crashes onto the rocks near Helena’s home after an impossible journey across the forbidden ocean. On board is a single passenger, a nine-year-old girl named Kailani, who calls herself The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky. A new and perilous purpose binds Jason and Helena together again, as they vow to protect the lost innocent from the wrath of the authorities, no matter the risk to their future and freedom. But is the mysterious child simply a troubled little girl longing to return home? Or is she a powerful prophet sent to unravel the fabric of a godless Republic, as the outlaw leader of an illegal religious sect would have them believe? Whatever the answer, it will change them all forever… and perhaps their world as well.
Assessed for Awesome Indies
The Awful Mess
Award: Awesome Indies: APPROVED
Categories: Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Tags: contemporary women, humor, Literary Fiction, religion and spirituality, small town fiction, YA Romance
Publisher: Sheer Hubris Press
Author: Sandra Hutchison
In this witty and affectionate debut, a “heathen” divorcee, an unhappily-married priest, and a handsome cop get into an awful mess in a very small town.
Assessed
White Chalk
Award: Awesome Indies: APPROVED
Categories: Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Tags: Coming of Age, Literary Fiction, self-harm, suicide
Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
Author: Pavarti K Tyler
Chelle isn’t what most people consider a typical 13-year-old girl — she doesn’t laugh with friends, play sports, or hang out at the mall after school. Instead, she navigates a world well beyond her years. Life in Dawson, ND spins on as she grasps at people, pleading for someone to save her—to return her to the simple childhood of unicorns on her bedroom wall and stories on her father’s knee. When Troy Christiansen walks into her life, Chelle is desperate to believe his arrival will be her salvation. So much so, she forgets to save herself. After experiencing a tragedy at school, her world begins to crack, causing a deeper scar in her already fragile psyche. Follow Chelle’s twisted tale of modern adolescence, as she travels down the rabbit hole into a reality none of us wants to admit actually exists.
Assessed for Awesome Indies