Self-Discovery

Sarah Mitchell has spent years selling an illusion of happiness beneath the neon lights of a Dallas strip club. Estranged from her family and separated from her young daughter, she has convinced herself that the life she's living is the only one she deserves. Daniel Reyes makes his living destroying lives. A drug dealer whose criminal enterprise has provided everything money can buy, Daniel has learned to bury his conscience beneath excuses, expensive possessions, and the belief that everyone makes their own choices. But when a nineteen-year-old customer dies from an overdose, the guilt becomes impossible to ignore. Hundreds of miles apart in their own understanding of the world, two broken people experience something neither can explain. A mysterious stranger appears to each of them. He knows their darkest secrets, their deepest regrets, and the moments of their lives no one else could possibly know. Time seems to stand still in his presence. And just as suddenly as he appears, he vanishes. Neither knows who he is. Neither understands why he came. And when they attempt to explain what happened, no one believes them. As Sarah and Daniel independently search for answers, they discover an astonishing possibility: the man they encountered may have been Jesus Christ. But their greatest struggle isn't convincing themselves that the encounter was real. It's convincing a world—including many within the Church—that two people with their pasts could possibly have been chosen for something extraordinary. Their separate journeys eventually bring them together, setting in motion a movement neither could have imagined. What begins with two unlikely believers sharing their experiences grows into an international ministry reaching thousands of people who have long believed themselves beyond forgiveness. But as their influence grows, so does the opposition. Daniel's criminal past threatens everything they've built. Sarah's relationship with her daughter hangs in the balance. Religious leaders question their legitimacy, former associates seek to exploit them, and the pressures of fame threaten to turn their message into something neither intended. They must confront a question that will define the rest of their lives: Were they chosen because they were worthy—or because nobody believed they could be? The Unworthy is a story of grace, forgiveness, second chances, and the extraordinary possibility that the people society has given up on may be the very people God calls to change the world.

Love Poems to Joshua Coe is a raw, unfiltered collection of passion, heartbreak, devotion, and desire. These poems were written from a place of deep love — the kind that shakes your soul, pulls you in like a magnet, and refuses to let go. Inside these pages, Carol L. Bridges opens her heart completely. She writes about longing that aches, love that heals and destroys, desire that burns hot, and the emotional storms that come with loving someone so intensely it changes who you are. Moving from soft devotion to fiery passion, through heartbreak and into the quiet strength that comes after, this collection captures the painful beauty of loving someone with your whole heart — and learning that love should never destroy you. Every poem is personal. Every line is honest. Every page is a piece of a love story that is unforgettable. If you've ever loved deeply, wanted fiercely, broken silently, or felt your heart pulled toward someone you could never resist — these poems will speak to you. This is love in its truest form: tender, messy, passionate, overwhelming, and real. For mature readers 18+. Contains adult content and themes of toxic love and emotional abuse.

We build walls to keep the hurt out. Sometimes they keep love out too. Walls is a raw, honest poetry collection about letting someone in, and what happens when they don't stay. From the fluttering hope of a heart opening up, through broken promises, lies and the slow fading of love, to the dark, drowning depths of heartbreak, Carol L. Bridges writes the feelings most of us keep locked away. These poems are for anyone who has loved too hard, been left on the floor, smiled while dying inside, and still found the strength to wash ashore. Because sometimes the only one who can reach through the wall and save you is you. Content note: this collection explores mature themes, including emotional abuse, self-harm and depression.

a collection of cherished recipes that are more than just instructions; they are a tribute to the traditions and flavors that have been passed down through generations, offering a taste of nostalgia with every bite. Whether you're a seasoned cook or a beginner just starting out, these recipes are designed to be accessible and rewarding. With straightforward instructions and ingredients that are as familiar as they are wholesome, anyone can create these dishes in their own kitchen. The essence of Gramma’s cooking is not just in the food itself, but in the experience of making it—of slowing down, savoring the process, and sharing the results with loved ones. As you flip through these pages, we hope you’ll find more than just recipes. We hope you’ll discover a connection to the past, a sense of comfort in the present, and a culinary foundation you can build on for the future. So gather your ingredients, roll up your sleeves, and whether you’re just putting on your first apron or you’ve been cooking for years, let the aromas of Gramma’s kitchen fill your home. There’s no need for perfection— just a willingness to cook with love and enjoy the simple pleasures of good, honest food.

Ain't No Shame in My Game: Mask Off — Book One By Chance At nineteen, Rain has been married for five years to a man she never chose. She has a secret plan to escape. She has money saved, and a date in mind. What she does not have is a reason to believe she deserves more — until Stormey. Now Rain must choose between the life she was forced into and the love that finally sees her clearly. Playing it safe could keep her alive. Walking away could set her free. But Entebbe does not let go easily. This is a preview: The Prologue and Chapters One through Three

Six prison bids. One dying mother. And a world that never stopped swinging. Starla walks out of the gates at twenty-six with a mesh property bag, two notebooks, and nothing else — straight into a hospice room, where she holds her mother Elena's hand for six months and watches the only person who ever loved her unconditionally slip away. Grief makes easy prey. Marcus finds her in the silence that follows — soft voice, warm meals, a house that promises safety. Two and a half years later, Starla walks out of that house with bruises hidden under her clothes and a restraining order in her hand, swearing no one will ever lock her in a corner again. She rebuilds the slow way: two years of night shifts under the golden arches, a studio apartment with her own lock on the door, a crew that feels like family. Then a manager with a clipboard squeezes her hours away, and the ground gives out all over again — eviction, neon streets, and a fast, dangerous blur she'd sworn she was done with. That's when Cole walks back into her life, ten years after she first let him go. Now Starla is homeless, carless, and sleeping on concrete — and her eight-year-old daughter, Lily, is waiting on a safe porch across town. To bring her baby home, Starla has to do the one thing the world says people like her can't: build something real out of nothing, one flipped dollar at a time. Bleeding Through Concrete is a raw, unflinching novella about survival, second chances, and a mother who refuses to stay down — no matter how many times the concrete cracks beneath her, she bleeds through it, and she blooms anyway.

Billionaire‌’s Bank:‌ A Tale⁠ of⁠ Power⁠ &​ Desire In a world of unimaginable we​alth, irresist‌ible passion‌, an‍d d⁠angerous secre​ts, love can be the most expens⁠ive gam⁠ble‌ of all. Caught b​etween two powerful men, one woman must n⁠a‌vigate a world of j⁠ealousy, be‍tra‌yal, ambitio⁠n, and for‌bidden d​e‌sire. Beh⁠ind their lu​xurious life​styles lie hidden truths th‍at could shatter empires and destroy hearts. As th‌e ba⁠ttle for love‌ an⁠d⁠ control intensifies, she discovers th⁠at money⁠ c‌an b‌uy almost anything—but never tr‌ue loyal‍ty. When pas‍sion clashe​s with power, who will win, and who will lose everything? ‍Billionair⁠e’s​ Bank is​ a thrilling romanc‍e filled with wealth, tempta​tion, suspense, and unexpected twists, where e‍very secret ha⁠s a pri⁠ce and eve‍ry heart has so⁠me​th‌ing to lose.

**Love's Healing Redemption** is a gripping, emotionally charged **18+ mafia romance** that proves even the darkest soul can find the light. Valerio "Val" Ricci is one of the world's most feared mafia leaders—a man who commands loyalty through power and fear. But behind his ruthless reputation lies a broken man haunted by loneliness, guilt, and a lifetime of violence. When he becomes captivated by Zara Blackwood, a compassionate and resilient woman whose kindness shines through her own painful past, everything begins to change. Starts as a dangerous obsession blossoms into an unforgettable love story filled with explosive chemistry, emotional healing, heartbreaking sacrifices, and unwavering devotion. Val fights to leave his violent past behind, they dare to dream of a future built on hope instead of fear. They transform pain into purpose by creating a revolutionary recovery network dedicated to helping survivors overcome trauma, addiction, emotional suffering—proving that redemption is possible, no matter how far someone has fallen. But powerful enemies, old loyalties, and the ghosts of Val's past threaten to destroy everything they've built. To protect the people they love and the future they believe in, they'll have to risk it all. If you love **protective alpha heroes, strong heroines, emotional redemption, found family, high-stakes mafia drama, steamy romance, and unforgettable happily-ever-afters**, **Love's Healing Redemption** will keep you turning pages long into the night. **Because sometimes the greatest love story isn't about being rescued—it's about learning to heal together.** \

A Compassionate Guide to Living Empowered With a Chronic Condition: From Surviving to Thriving   Living with a chronic condition can change how you navigate daily life, manage your energy, and see yourself. But your diagnosis does not define your worth, erase your strengths, or determine your future.   In A Compassionate Guide to Living Empowered With a Chronic Condition: From Surviving to Thriving, Coach Donna O’Neil offers compassionate guidance for women living with chronic illness, chronic pain, and fatigue who want to approach life with greater self-awareness, confidence, and self-compassion.   Discover ways to honor your limits, pace your activities, manage your energy, practice self-care without guilt, communicate your needs, and strengthen your self-advocacy. Through thoughtful guidance and reflection, you are encouraged to recognize your strengths, explore strategies that fit your individual circumstances, and make choices that honor your needs and priorities.   You do not have to push beyond your limits to prove your worth. You do not have to follow someone else’s definition of success. Living empowered means learning to work with your circumstances, adapting when life changes, and discovering what well-being and fulfillment can look like for you.   Thriving does not mean being symptom-free or having every answer. It means recognizing that you remain a whole person with strengths, choices, possibilities, and a voice in your own journey.   Whether you are beginning to navigate a diagnosis or seeking a more sustainable way to live with a long-term condition, this guide offers encouragement to move forward at your own pace—with compassion, purpose, and hope.   You are seen. You are heard. You are not alone. 🌸™   Coach Donna O’Neil Chronic Condition Wellness Life Coach | Patient Advocacy Insider | Author

What if the person you lost wasn't your relationship—but yourself? Narcissistic abuse leaves wounds that often can't be seen. It can erode your confidence, make you question your reality, and leave you feeling anxious, isolated, and unsure of who you are. But your story does not end there. Healing After Narcissistic Abuse is a compassionate guide designed to help survivors break free from the lasting effects of emotional manipulation and begin rebuilding a life filled with peace, confidence, and hope. Inside, you'll discover how to recognize the effects of narcissistic abuse, practical tools to rebuild self-worth, healthy boundary-setting strategies, guided journal prompts, healing exercises, and daily affirmations, plus a 30-day healing journey.  You are seen. You are heard. You are not alone. 🌸™   Coach Donna O’Neil, Chronic Condition Wellness Life Coach | Patient Advocacy Insider | Author

Based on a true story of a search for a better life worth living and the need for redemption . A journey  from the UK to the USA to Canada and Ireland to an old jetty and a floating dock by a beach in the heart of south east asia . And to a point of no return  Featuring themes of spirituality self discovery mortality and regret. Have you ever asked yourself how much would you'd be prepared to give to find out truly who you are , would you even want to know .  If you're looking for a better life and wonder is the grass really greener on the the side.. Perhaps you should take a pause . My advice just be careful what you wish for  John doe

A Compassionate Guide to Pain and Healing   Living with pain can affect every part of life—physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Yet pain does not define who you are, and you do not have to navigate its challenges with guilt, shame, or the pressure to do more than your body allows.   A Compassionate Guide to Pain and Healing by Coach Donna O’Neil is a faith-sensitive, educational guide created to support individuals living with pain as they explore their experiences with greater understanding, self-compassion, and hope.   Through 10 thoughtful chapters and guided reflection pages, you will explore different types of pain, the challenges of hidden pain, the importance of honoring your limits, self-care without guilt, communicating your needs, and advocating for the care and support you deserve. Gentle reflections encourage you to recognize your strengths, listen to yourself, and discover approaches that respect your individual circumstances, values, and needs.   This guide does not promise a cure or suggest that healing looks the same for everyone. Instead, it offers encouragement to approach your journey with patience, compassion, and a renewed sense of possibility. Faith-sensitive reflections are woven into the experience to offer comfort and hope without judgment or pressure.   Whether you are learning to live with ongoing pain, supporting someone you love, or seeking a more compassionate understanding of your own experience, this guide reminds you that your struggles are real, your needs matter, and your worth is not measured by what you can accomplish.   You are seen. You are heard. You are not alone. 🌸™   Created by Coach Donna O’Neil, Chronic Condition Wellness Life Coach, Patient Advocacy Insider, and Author.

*A field full of garden phlox and Russian sage spread in front of her. A quiet breeze picked up and brought the sweet smell of the blossoms to her.  She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes (“Where am I? How did I get here?”).  She slowly looked around attempting to make sense of where she was.* *The massive field rolled in every direction, seamlessly untouched, but still.*    *A flak of skylarks flew overhead carried by the breeze; she slowly stepped forward.  She felt the soft grass underneath her feet.  The landscape seemed to go on, as if it had no start and no end.  Just then she noticed a light shimmering in the distance. It was almost as if it was calling to her.  As she looked down, she noticed a path clearing through the flowers in the same direction as the flak of birds. She was sure it wasn’t there before.  She felt herself starting to move forward, as if the breeze was pushing her along the path. Up ahead in the far distance she started to hear faint music playing. She stopped and attempted to listen.  As she was listening, she noticed the sun getting closer on the horizon, filling the sky with soft violet and gold. Darkness slowly settled overhead.  She began to recognize the soft melody as she grew closer. Just as she stepped through the trees she stops.*        *As she stood there, she saw a white gazebo wrapped in twinkling lights.  She could still her the music somewhere nearby.  She took a moment and stared.  She felt a sense of calm come over her.  The place seemed to feel familiar to her, but she didn’t know from were.*      *Before she realized, she found herself walking towards the gazebo.  As she got closer, she saw a small radio playing softly.  Next to it was a bottle of red wine, two glasses and a picnic basket.  The bottle and glasses were sitting on a table next to the radio.  She stopped just at the bottom of the steps.  As she looked around in the gazebo, she saw a tall man with his back turned toward her.  Her heart started racing a bit, she felt herself calm at the same time.  It was as if she knew him somehow from a distant past.  She kept still, confused yet curious.  Her gaze fixed on him.  She started to climb the steps one by one, slowly.  No more then she reached the top step a piercing sound filled the air Beep. Beep. Beep.*

She walked into his bar at forty-five and didn’t apologize for a single year of it. Nadia Thorne isn’t looking for forever. She’s looking for someone who can keep up — someone strong enough not to need fixing. Alex Vale, the vampire Reeve who rules the city’s nights, has spent a thousand years being worshiped, feared, and desired… and never once being *seen*. She doesn’t swoon. She studies him. And for the first time in centuries, he’s the one being hunted — by a woman, and by a hunger he thought he’d buried long ago. But Nadia wants something more than a dangerous romance. She believes the supernatural world can have real peace — and she’s willing to fight for it. She calls it the Crimson Accord: one treaty, every race, no more hiding. And she’ll build it even if she has to start in a vampire’s bar, beside a man who’s keeping secrets. Some bonds are earned. Some treaties are written in blood. And some queens rise when the moon turns red.

In Newly Diagnosed, Not Defeated, Donna O’Neil draws on more than 29 years of healthcare experience as a Medical Assistant and her own lived experience navigating chronic illness to offer compassionate encouragement and practical guidance for the journey ahead.  You are seen. You are heard. You are not alone. 🌸™   Coach Donna O’Neil, Chronic Condition Wellness Life Coach | Patient Advocacy Insider | Author

*When God Is Done With the Person You Pretend to Be* confronts the gap between who you appear to be and who you truly are. Through an honest examination of identity, hidden wounds, pride, and surrender, this book challenges readers to release the masks they wear, face the truths they avoid, and allow God to transform them from the inside out. Because sometimes, becoming who God created you to be begins with letting go of who you have been pretending to be.

When Autumn encounters the enigmatic and devastatingly handsome Tristan Jordan in downtown Chicago, she quickly realizes he's no ordinary man—he’s a vampire, and he knows who she is. What begins as a chance meeting spirals into an intense and magnetic connection that neither of them can ignore. Autumn soon learns she’s been under surveillance by the vampire world due to her unique bloodline, which may carry untapped magical power. As she and Tristan grow closer, their bond deepens—literally. Through Tristan’s bite, their souls become psychically linked, giving them the ability to communicate without words and feel each other's emotions. But love doesn’t come without shadows. Tristan harbors secrets of his own: a dark past, a chaotic younger brother named Jaiden with dangerous ambitions, and a vampire world divided by ideology. As Autumn moves into a new house with her best friend Jade and begins a new college semester, her life shifts from ordinary to surreal. Vampire politics, ancient bloodlines, and supernatural threats swirl around her. Soon, she’s being stalked by Jaiden, who is obsessed with making her his vampire bride—or worse. As her mystical ancestry begins to awaken, Autumn is drawn into a deeper war: between light and dark, power and purpose, legacy and love. She must learn to control her gifts, guard her heart, and survive the pull of ancient forces that seek to claim her. In the final chapters, Autumn embraces her destiny—not just as Tristan’s beloved, but as a powerful force in her own right. She faces the Hollow, confronts her shadow self, and finds the strength to forgive, love, and transform.

What does it truly mean to lead yourself? Many people desire to lead others, build stronger families, earn respect, and create meaningful lives. Yet the most important work often begins where nobody else can see it: within ourselves. *Governed From Within* is a thought-provoking guide to self-mastery, personal responsibility, discipline, and intentional living. It challenges readers to examine who they have become, recognize the habits and attitudes shaping their decisions, and take ownership of the person they are becoming. Through practical principles and honest self-reflection, this book explores the importance of governing your thoughts, managing your responses, keeping your word, accepting correction, establishing healthy boundaries, and aligning your daily habits with your deepest values. This is not simply about appearing disciplined or projecting an image of strength. It is about developing the character to do what is right when nobody is watching, the humility to acknowledge where you need to grow, and the consistency to make meaningful changes even when motivation fades. Whether you are a man seeking greater direction, a husband or father striving to lead more effectively, or an individual determined to become more intentional in life, this book offers a framework for examining yourself and strengthening the principles that guide your decisions. Because genuine leadership does not begin with authority over others. It begins with responsibility for yourself. **Before you can lead effectively on the outside, you must learn to govern yourself from within.**

Ernie is twenty-nine, autistic, and reasonably certain that dating should come with an instruction manual. When he meets Eric on a dating app for gay autistic men, things start promisingly enough. Eric seems friendly, their conversations are easy, and nobody appears to be playing the sort of social guessing games Ernie would rather avoid. Then Eric asks to meet for coffee. Suddenly, a simple date becomes an exhausting exercise in overthinking, sensory concerns, and imagining every possible way things could go wrong. Ernie knows he wants to meet Eric. He also knows that staying home would be considerably easier. With a little help from his therapist, Ernie begins to confront a familiar pattern: wanting something, getting close to it, and retreating when it becomes real. But what if Eric really is as nice as he seems? *He Seems Nice* is a warm, gently funny story about autism, anxiety, vulnerability, and the courage it takes to step outside your comfort zone. Because sometimes the biggest adventure isn't falling in love. It's getting out the door.

Daniel Brooks has spent his life becoming the kind of man everyone can depend on. He works hard, provides for his family, solves problems, and carries his responsibilities without complaint. To the outside world, he is strong, disciplined, and reliable. But behind the image of a man who has everything under control, his family is slowly growing distant. His wife, Renee, has learned to choose her words carefully, while his children are beginning to withdraw. Daniel believes his sacrifices should speak for themselves, unable to understand why the people he loves feel unheard and disconnected. He has confused providing with being present, silence with respect, and control with leadership. When honest conversations expose the damage caused by his pride and defensiveness, Daniel faces a difficult question: What if the person he most needs to lead is himself? His journey toward change forces him to confront uncomfortable truths, accept responsibility without excuses, and recognize that good intentions cannot replace meaningful action. Rebuilding trust requires more than apologies. It demands humility, patience, consistency, and the courage to change when old habits threaten to return. As Daniel begins to practice a different kind of strength, his family must decide whether his efforts represent genuine transformation. He cannot erase the past or demand forgiveness, but he can choose how he responds, what he repairs, and who he becomes through his daily decisions. *The Man He Kept Becoming* is a contemporary family drama about love, accountability, discipline, and redemption. It explores the difference between controlling others and governing oneself, revealing how pride can disguise itself as strength and how repeated choices shape the person we ultimately become. Because the hardest person to lead is often yourself, and becoming a better man begins when you stop defending who you have been and take responsibility for who you are becoming.

At forty-five, Andy is about to lose the man he married. His husband, Ben, is thirty-six, and while their divorce is only days away from becoming final, Andy is still wondering whether love can survive the things people do to each other. Their marriage has reached a breaking point, leaving Andy to navigate the painful space between what they once promised each other and what their relationship has become. For Ben, moving on seems straightforward. For Andy, letting go is considerably more complicated. As he revisits the memories, disappointments, and ordinary moments that once made up their life together, Andy must confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, wanting to save a relationship isn't enough. And sometimes, the person you're waiting for has already decided not to return. In one final attempt to hold on to what remains, Andy makes a gesture that could change everything—or finally give him the answer he's been avoiding. *The Things We Promise Each Other* is a bittersweet literary novella about love, heartbreak, and the promises we make when we believe forever is possible. With emotional honesty and a quiet, wry understanding of human relationships, it explores what happens when one person is ready to let go and the other is still searching for a reason to stay.

The Blood of My Blood Series is a three-tiered botanical Gothic memoir tracing generations of an inheritance blanketed in shadows filled with sorrow across shifting prairies and vast peaks. Between blood-soaked Oklahoman clay and the golden fields of Nebraska, come with me to unlock my mother's green trunk—examining the fragments of my family's trauma and secrecy, while discovering the maternal sacrifice that flows through my bloodline like silent, deadly currents.

### ***A Descent into Mechanical Noir*** **Book I: He Who Walks the Nothing** Stripped of comfort, routine, and identity, Marek enters a stone cellar and falls into the Void—a metaphysical landscape that feeds on silence and reflection. Guided by the crushing pressure of the universe itself, he is forced to endure twenty-five brutal trials. Armed with only his breath and a dull blade that sharpens with his own honesty, he battles the Wolves of Habit, which are feral creatures born of his excuses and addictions. He climbs the Stair of Coins to face his financial and moral debts, and stands in the Temple of Two Ears to confront the devastating consequences of refusing to truly listen to those he loved. In the Forge of Identity, he hammers his fear, shame, and primal desire into a new tool of survival. Ultimately, Marek does not find clean forgiveness; instead, he finds the God-Spark within himself, willingly accepting the burden of the dark life he almost lived as a permanent compass to navigate his way back to reality. **Book II: The Geometer** Back in the waking world, Marek operates Aperture Mechanical Solutions, repairing engines while trying to maintain his grip on his newly forged identity. But the shadows have followed him, personified by KlusterFux—a volatile, jester-like manifestation of Marek’s anger, calculation, and survival instincts who chimes with phantom bells and burns with red eyes. The battle here shifts from gaining power to mastering restraint. Marek faces the gods of False Mastery, Leverage, and Empty Rooms, learning the agonizing discipline of refusing to dominate others or force outcomes to soothe his own discomfort. In the ultimate act of psychological alignment, Marek integrates KlusterFux entirely, accepting his own capacity for violence and darkness so that it can never blindly govern him again.  **Book III: Listen While It Whispers** Marek and Donjha are pulled into a terrifying new architecture—a recursive, fractal manifestation of their own relationship. This realm does not test their strength; it weaponizes their distance. They navigate infinite hallways, locked rooms, and a heartbreakingly perfect house they never actually lived in, witnessing every possible outcome of their shared choices. The environment perfectly mirrors their instincts, physically expanding the space between them whenever Marek tries to chase her or she tries to flee. Finally, they encounter the "Fourth Point"—a pure geometry representing the vast, indifferent system that contains them both, proving that they are not the center of the universe. They escape the trap not by saving each other, but by letting go of the desperate need to control the other's choices, returning to the real world to build a life in real-time. You don't fix the machine by screaming at it. You fix it by listening while it whispers. **Enter the VoidDoctrine.** From the grease-stained concrete of small engine repair to the infinite, crushing geometry of the human mind, author Jon Edward Praker delivers a visceral masterpiece of industrial mysticism. This isn't just a story of addiction, heartbreak, and recovery. It is a mechanical blueprint for the soul. The Nigredo Logic Group proudly presents a trilogy for those who have fallen, those who are climbing, and those who know that the darkest parts of themselves aren't enemies—they are adaptations. *He Who Walks the Nothing.* *The Geometer.* *Listen While It Whispers.* **Available now.**

Exiled and left to die on a hostile alien planet for a crime she didnt commit, alita is saved by a alien native who wants nothing to do with her... Or so he thought. \ `Xanadis...A world deemed uninhabitable by humans and made into a penal colony where deathrow convicts are sent to serve out the rest of their lives, forced to fight to survive or subcome to the harsh enviroment and fall prey to the many creatures that live there. `\ \ `After being convicted of a murder she didnt commit alita is left stranded on the hostile world filled with carnivorous plants, ruthless criminals, hostile natives, and bloodthirsty monsters. `\ \ `She comes to realize the world isnt as unforgiving and cold as it seems. She's saved by a native who dislikes humans as much as the next guy but shes intent on sticking by his side in order to survive. The only issue being is the last thing he wants is a pathetic, weak human girl following him around.`\ \ \ \ \ `(Limited time only read!) `\ \ \ ` (THIS IS THE RE-WRITTEN VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL STORY AND WILL ONLY BE AVAILABLE TEMPORARILY)`

**FREE PREVIEW — MY BECOMING** Enjoy a complimentary introduction and brief excerpt from *My Becoming: One Life. No Dress Rehearsal.*, the published memoir by Le Ann Hall. The complete book is available for purchase through major book retailers.   **My Becoming: A Journey Through Love, Loss, Faith, and Rediscovery** What happens when life asks you to begin again, even when you believe you have nothing left to give? In *My Becoming*, author Le Ann Hall invites readers into an intimate journey of love, unimaginable loss, grief, resilience, and personal transformation. Through the heartbreak of losing her son and beloved family members, navigating complicated relationships, and rediscovering her own voice, Le Ann shares how faith, courage, and self-reflection helped her move forward—not by forgetting her past, but by learning to live beyond the pain. More than a memoir, *My Becoming* is an invitation to anyone who has experienced loss, questioned their purpose, or struggled to recognize the person they are becoming. It is a reminder that healing is not a destination, growth has no expiration date, and every chapter of life offers an opportunity to begin again. **Because becoming isn't about arriving. It's about continuing.** **Purchase the Complete Memoir** Thank you for reading this complimentary preview of *My Becoming: One Life. No Dress Rehearsal.* Continue the journey! The complete memoir by Le Ann Hall is available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover editions. **Find your copy here:**  Available Now — Find Your Copy **Amazon — Kindle, Paperback & Hardcover** <https://a.co/d/0bneYcgI> **Apple Books — eBook** <https://books.apple.com/us/book/my-becoming/id6815373676> **Barnes & Noble — eBook** <https://share.google/F5nwLy4ZuB4qUmgzU> **Google Play Books — eBook** <https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=QH8ZEgAAQBAJ>    About the Author Le Ann Hall is an author, Certified Life and Grief Coach, ordained minister, and advocate for emotional wellness, personal growth, and resilience. Drawing from her lived experiences, professional training, and commitment to helping others, she encourages individuals to navigate life's challenges, embrace healing, and discover new possibilities. Her message is simple yet powerful: **Life is not about having everything figured out. It is about having the courage to keep becoming.** *I am a work in progress.* — Le Ann Hall

"I Can't Make This Up" is a humorous and heartfelt memoir about one woman's ongoing battle with bureaucracy, bad luck, and baffling human behavior. Through a series of unbelievable but true experiences, she recounts everything from scam emails and vehicle registration nightmares to canceled medications, a traffic stop involving "weed" that wasn't weed, and the loss of a cherished home. Along the way she reflects on modern society, common sense, education, family, disability, and the resilience required to keep moving forward when life seems determined to pile one absurd challenge after another in your path. Equal parts comedy, frustration, and perseverance, this collection of stories proves that sometimes the only way to survive life's chaos is to laugh at it. Back Cover Blurb If someone told you this stuff happened in a novel, you'd say it was too ridiculous to be believable. A vehicle registration renewal becomes a bureaucratic obstacle course. A WiFi adapter is mistaken for drug paraphernalia. Medications disappear without warning. Scam artists promise millions. A beloved fifth wheel home vanishes from reach. And somehow, through it all, there's still room for family, stubborn determination, and the occasional glimmer of hope. With sharp humor, unapologetic honesty, and plenty of "you've got to be kidding me" moments, I Can't Make This Up is a memoir about surviving disability, bureaucracy, bad decisions, and the endless parade of absurdities that make up everyday life. Because sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. And sometimes a whole lot funnier.

Oswy has spent his life understanding what breaks—and how to put it back together. A skilled bonesetter and craftsman from a world far removed from modern life, Oswy knows the grain of wood, the alignment of bone, and the cost of forcing something to bend beyond what it can bear. But when a catastrophic flood tears him out of everything he knows and deposits him in a strange modern city, his old skills are suddenly surrounded by things he cannot name: unfamiliar machines, an unreadable language, and a society whose rules make little sense to him. Alone and unable to find his way home, Oswy must learn how to survive without the knowledge and standing that once defined him. The people who take him in offer warmth and help, but belonging is harder than rescue. His hands still know how to mend what others cannot—and when people around him are in danger, that knowledge becomes a responsibility he cannot easily refuse. Yet Oswy’s gift is not without a cost. He understands better than most that holding something together can consume the person doing the holding. As he begins to find a place in this unfamiliar world, he must confront the difference between being useful and being valued, between enduring pain and accepting help, and between preserving what is broken and learning when to let go.

This series focuses on the upcoming officer pipeline in training at Astro Corps Academy. this is a New Adult series as these are all college aged characters. The series focuses on Kathleen "Kat " Walters, Francessca "Fran" Corsacci, Jackson "Jax" Bates and Evan Linares. This series will focus on Academy classes that will refresh the officer pipeline in the *ASC Galaxy* series. This is a companion series to *ASC Galaxy*. These characters will join the *ASC Galaxy* series in *ASC Galaxy: Battle Lines (Book Six)*.

Adrian owns three international shipping companies, commands a private jet equipped for international diplomacy, and has survived the sort of boardroom negotiations that would make lesser men weep into their quarterly reports. He considers himself a rational adult. Then he falls in love with Lucien. Lucien is beautiful, emotionally delicate, and apparently capable of turning a perfectly ordinary Tuesday into a full-scale metaphysical emergency. He also has Blaze, his spiritual emergency contact, and Saturn, a man whose relationship with reality is best described as complicated. When Lucien experiences a cosmic crisis of truly unprecedented proportions, Adrian does what any devoted, obscenely wealthy boyfriend would do: he mobilizes private aviation, international wellness specialists, luxury mountain estates, and enough crystals to destabilize a small economy. What follows is an increasingly absurd international wellness expedition involving emergency healing circles, mysterious astronomical phenomena, spiritual containment protocols, and a support team whose collective grasp on reality deteriorates by the hour. Meanwhile, Adrian's long-suffering assistant Marianne is discovering that there are limits to human endurance, even when the espresso is excellent and the expense account is effectively bottomless. Because money can buy private jets, exclusive retreats, and the finest spiritual practitioners on three continents. What it cannot buy is a straightforward explanation for why the moon has apparently become a workplace emergency. *My Emotional Support Twink is Having a Cosmic Crisis* is an absurdist comedy about love, wealth, wellness culture, and the extraordinary lengths one man will go to for his boyfriend—even when absolutely nobody can agree on what the hell is happening. Some relationships require compromise. Others require international logistics, emergency incense, and a very patient executive assistant.

This will be a three-book series featuring Brenda Moonsong. They are Rise Lunar Sentinel, The Moon veil Accords, and Finally Final Eclipse.

The School of Dating: Real Lessons. Real Love. A Brighter Tomorrow by Ykeme Smith-Bey is a practical, relatable guide for anyone ready to date with more confidence, intention, and discernment. Dating shouldn’t feel like walking into class without a syllabus. Through 24 easy-to-follow lessons, The School of Dating explores everything from preparing for the first date and having meaningful conversations to setting boundaries, recognizing red and green flags, understanding compatibility, protecting your peace, and knowing when it’s time to walk away. With warmth, humor, and straight-to-the-point guidance, Ykeme reminds readers that dating isn’t an audition to convince someone to choose you—you’re choosing, too. Whether you’re returning to the dating world, healing from past relationships, or simply ready to make healthier choices in love, this book gives you tools to date without losing yourself in the process. Class is in session. Bring your standards with you.

The Womb Remembers\ Healing What Was Carried, Releasing What Was Never Yours\ By Ykeme Smith-Bey What have you been carrying that was never yours to carry? The Womb Remembers invites women to explore how childhood lessons, family patterns, and unspoken expectations shape their relationships and sense of self. Through compassionate reflection, thoughtful questions, and affirmations, readers are encouraged to reclaim their voice, honor their boundaries, and reconnect with themselves. Using the womb as a spiritual and emotional metaphor, this book creates space to examine your story without blame or pressure. Move at your own pace, recognize what helped you survive, and choose what you want to carry forward. Your story matters. You have a say in what comes next.

Eugene Pull is your normal bull riding, teenage boy who works on his family's farm in the small rural town of Satin, Texas. His dreams are shattered, when he discovers his mother is losing the farm. Desperate to qualify for a state program, he turns in his blood sample to a lab to prove his ancestry. Once this happens, secrets are revealed that lead to a state wide government chase with an odd Native American named Silas Crow. This longer short story is filled with adventure, revelations and a deed clause that may change everything.

Tanja’s encounter with the mysterious Josh begins like any classic tale of serendipity a broken- down car, a stranger offering help, a spark of chemistry that feels too good to ignore. But what starts as a chance meeting on a moonlit road soon spirals into a web of lies, secrets, and dangerous allures. Josh's life is far more complicated than Tanja could have ever imagined, and when his wife, Trina, unexpectedly arrives, the truth begins to unravel in a way that shakes Tanja to her core. Josh's confession that he’s living a double life as an undercover agent leaves Tanja torn between heartbreak and the undeniable connection they share. But even after fleeing to paradise for a temporary escape, the shadows of Josh’s world follow her. And when a mysterious message arrives, Tanja is faced with a choice: walk away from the man she’s still drawn to, or risk everything to face the dangerous reality of his secrets. *The Choices We Make* is a tense, gripping psychological thriller where the lines between love, trust, and survival blur. Will Tanja be able to forgive the lies that brought her into Josh’s world? Or will the truth about the man she thought she knew destroy everything they’ve built? As danger closes in, Tanja must decide how far she’s willing to go for Josh, for herself, and for a future that may be darker than she ever imagined.

She was just trying to cool down on the porch. Then a light in the sky pulsed back at her. Alexis has spent years holding everybody else’s life together—her husband’s trucking company, her family, her friends, everybody’s problems. But lately, something has been changing. The dreams are getting louder. Strange memories keep surfacing. And the more she pays attention, the harder it becomes to ignore what she has always known about herself. Then a receipt falls out of her husband’s jacket. What starts as a question about a receipt opens the door to something much bigger. Her marriage begins unraveling, her dreams become harder to dismiss, and experiences she once kept to herself start connecting in ways she never expected. Her grandmother, the Little Hell Raiser, carried two guns in her purse “in case she missed the first one.” Her hypnotherapist has coffin-shaped nails and a chair that looks like a lawn recliner. Her daughter calls from North Carolina. Her Morkie, Tank, is along for all of it. As Alexis begins following the strange experiences instead of pushing them aside, she finds herself questioning what she thought she knew about her life, her family, and herself. *I Am the Signal* is funny, raw, mysterious, and rooted in experiences that refuse to fit neatly into one explanation. It starts with a flicker in the sky.

The Things We Carry is a daughter’s journey through memory, grief, family, and the complicated inheritance of love. At its heart is Don Hawkins—a father, husband, mentor, coach, educator, and friend whose influence reached far beyond his own family. Through memories of football, family, work, caregiving, laughter, loss, and the people whose lives he quietly changed, his daughter begins to see her father not only as the man she knew, but as the man others knew. Some of the stories are hers. Others belong to the people who walked beside him, worked with him, learned from him, challenged him, depended on him, and loved him. Together, those stories become something larger than a portrait of one man. They become a reflection on what we inherit from the people we love: the lessons they taught us, the kindness they showed, the battles they fought, the mistakes they made, and the pieces of themselves they leave behind. Because when someone we love is gone, we don't simply lose them. We carry them. And sometimes, it takes losing someone to finally understand how much of them was already living inside us.

This is not a business book with a personal story attached to it. This is one woman's honest account of facing herself in the mirror, surviving what she didn't plan for, losing herself in a love that couldn't love her back, hitting bottom, and rebuilding — chapter by chapter — both her life and a business that finally feels like her own. Unfiltered, faith-led, and grounded in the real work of healing, this book walks you through both the story and the method, so you can build whatever your own "unfiltered" looks like. A raw, unfiltered account of facing yourself in the mirror, surviving what you didn't plan for, losing yourself in love that couldn't love you back, hitting bottom, finding faith in the dark, and rebuilding—chapter by chapter—both your life and a framework for building a future that actually feels like yours. This book is for every woman who is rebuilding alone.

When disgraced social media influencer Maeve Mooney—whose greatest ambition is to marry money so she never has to work again—tumbles down an abandoned mine shaft that her daft Irish grandmother insisted was “magical,” she is transported to 1901 Cripple Creek. Thanks to the discovery of  rich veins of gold in what was previously a remote cow pasture, Cripple Creek has become Colorado's fourth largest city.  The District is home to overnight millionaires, ambitious entrepreneurs and hardworking miners who, thanks to the Western Federation of Miners, have created a prosperous life for themselves and their families. Maeve soon finds employment as a piano player, entertaining wealthy businessmen with songs such as “Rocky Mountain High” (which  won’t be written for decades), and ordinary workers at the Pick-Axe saloon, owned by charismatic union leader Ronan Doyle. Maeve is initially determined to stay neutral amidst rising tensions between miners and mine owners, but after she and Ronan become lovers, she champions the union cause. She believes as passionately as Ronan in the WFM slogan: **Labor produces all wealth. Wealth belongs to the producers thereof.** After a strike is called in Cripple Creek and across the state, Maeve works tirelessly on behalf of the strikers and their families. But Maeve knows how the Colorado Labor Wars will end. How could she not? She was raised on stories of the strike, and of the courage of her great-great grandfather, who almost single-handedly stood up to the mine owners and their stooges. (Another lie, which she soon discovers.) History books tell the actual tale.   The Wars end in disaster. The WFM will be eradicated; the miners and their families arrested, imprisoned and banned forever from the District. Cripple Creek itself will never recover.  And what will happen to Ronan Doyle? Maeve has a choice. Remain in 1904 Cripple Creek to witness the annihilation of her and Ronan’s dream--and possibly his death? Or return to the 21st century and a life without even the possibility of her beloved?

Peter Pen and Michael Needles are two broke Los Angeles dreamers convinced they’re one great idea away from making a fortune. Pen spins advertising signs for a living and longs to become somebody people notice. Needles sells “enriched” tube socks through a questionable multi-level marketing business and lives by one unshakable philosophy: **profits are better than wages.** After a string of disastrous business schemes and romantic disappointments, the unlikely partners stumble onto their most outrageous idea yet: **Passports to Love**, an international matchmaking service promising lonely American men the chance to meet their perfect “good girl” overseas. What begins as another get-rich-quick scheme unexpectedly takes off. Soon Pen and Needles are juggling eccentric clients, prospective brides, government scrutiny, romantic misunderstandings, and the uncomfortable realization that the people in their catalogs have lives, dreams, and choices of their own. Things become even more complicated when love finds the two men themselves. Pen grows closer to the sharp, independent Bunny Divine, while Needles discovers that his obsessive search for the perfect woman may have kept him from recognizing Sara—the very woman capable of challenging everything he believes about love. As their business grows and their friendship is pushed to the breaking point, Pen and Needles must decide what matters more: the fortune they’ve spent their lives chasing or the people they could lose along the way. **Passports to Love** is a fast-moving romantic comedy about friendship, ambition, bad decisions, second chances, and two hustlers who try to sell love—only to discover that love is the one thing they can’t put a price on.

Hospital monitors beep steadily as federal agents whisper outside the door, waiting for Jeremy Ryan to flatline. But before the silence claims him, his entire defiant existence surges back into focus.   Born into severe rural neglect and subjected to horrific medical abuse under Munchausen by proxy, Jeremy refused to be caged. Breaking free from small-town Wisconsin's psychiatric wards, he fled south into the mid-2000s criminal underworld of Detroit's notorious Cass Corridor. Adopting the street handle Fuzzbuster, Jeremy moved weight, outmaneuvered rival operators, and found a fierce, grounded love in Dominique.   Even as an aggressive cancer diagnosis and punishing radiation threatened his body, Jeremy refused to yield to weakness or fear. But survival in Detroit demands blood. When a fatal neighborhood ambush tears his world apart, claiming Dominique and their unborn child, Jeremy is catapulted into agonizing grief, exile, and a profound psychedelic rebirth.   Origins of a Demon is an unfiltered, heart-pounding journey through institutional violence, organized crime, and relentless personal resilience. Discover what happens when a corrupt system tries to break a man—and creates a demon instead.

Kathera always thought she was destined to be a warrior. Trained from a young age to serve the throne, she poured everything into her swordplay until her parents returned from a journey with a quiet girl in a Seer's cloak. That was the day the truth was revealed: Kathera wasn't meant to fight on the front lines. Her father’s vision foretold she would be Celentra’s next Empress, the very ruler her people would fight for.  Amiranthia loved her home in Paesuna, where she spent her days under the desert sun. Everything changed when two powerful strangers arrived at her door and demanded her service as a royal Seer. Bound by the Pact of Hithis, sealed by the God of Agreements himself, she was torn from her family and whisked away to the cold, distant mountains of Arynthia.  Cyrus is a scholar at heart and, unfortunately, telekinetic. He has spent years ignoring the strange ability to move objects with his mind, preferring the safety of ancient books and forgotten lore. But when he is thrust into the Academy of Mages for a placement test, his past becomes impossible to hide, and his powers far too dangerous to ignore.  Three souls, Three distinct paths, one intertwined fate. Together, they hold the pieces of an ancient puzzle, and an empire’s future hangs in the balance.

A stubborn boy from Tarsus. A brilliant student of the Law. A fiercely loyal friend. A man certain he knew exactly what God required of him. And then he met Jesus. Saul had devoted his life to defending the faith of his fathers, even when that devotion demanded blood. But on the road to Damascus, the man hunting the followers of Jesus was struck down by the very Christ he sought to destroy. He rose from the dust changed—and discovered that conversion was only the beginning. The friends of his old life no longer knew him. The Christians remembered what he had done to them. Rome watched him. Enemies followed him from city to city. And waiting among the ghosts of his past were people he had loved, wounded, and never expected to see again. From the streets of Tarsus and Jerusalem to Antioch, Philippi, Corinth, and Rome, Paul will endure friendship and betrayal, prison and violence, temptation and loss as he carries an impossible message across an empire: **The Messiah did not come for one people. He came for everyone.**

A teenage boy who is so average that he feels inadequate in every aspect of his life wants nothing but to be seen as equal to his peers and the people in his town, but more especially by his love interest, Allison. But he soon realizes that he was already just a little bit above average.

Four 15-year-old boys in a small town dream of heavy metal stardom and all that comes with it. But they discover the journey is long, and the path is rougher than they ever could have imagined. But the rewards, if achieved, are bigger than their wildest dreams; they just have to get there first. Will they make it, or will their dreams crash, burn, and die like so many before them?

Four 15 year old boys have heavy metal dreams only to have them shattered, or do they. Fighting to the top is not a strait or easy path, the pain severe, the rewards are bigger then they ever dreamed, but they have to get there first.

Theresa Walsh lives a peaceful life in a quiet mountain town, working alongside her loving adoptive mother Rachel McCarthy at their antiquarian bookshop. Her tranquil existence shatters when a violent squad of supernatural warriors invades her town, revealing that Theresa is the long-lost daughter and sole heir of Arthur Miller, the brutal alpha of the Silverpine pack. Arthur has spent twenty years waging a merciless war of attrition against his sworn rivals, the Blackthorn pack. While fleeing an ambush orchestrated by Arthur's treacherous enforcer Carl Whitfield, Theresa is captured by Blackthorn's ruthless alpha, Victor Powell. The moment their eyes meet in the prison cells, an undeniable fated mate bond ignites between them, shattering Victor's cold resolve and igniting a fierce, forbidden desire. Victor refuses to use Theresa as a pawn, provoking suspicion from his battle-hardened beta Donna Peterson. As Carl Whitfield schemes to overthrow Arthur and annihilate both territories, Theresa must navigate the violent awakening of her dormant wolf instincts. When Arthur captures Rachel to force Theresa's submission, Theresa and Victor form a dangerous alliance that blurs the lines between sworn enemies and destined lovers. Together, they must dismantle ancient blood feuds, expose Carl's deadly conspiracy, and claim their shared destiny before the supernatural war consumes everything they cherish.

Cast into exile and forced into a land scarred by war and forgotten magic, a lone traveler must survive the weather, beasts, skeleton armies, betrayal, and the growing weight of the blade he carries. As his journey pulls him deeper into a world of ancient powers and buried truths, every step brings him closer to a final test that may cost him more than his life. Told entirely in verse, The Traveler is a dark fantasy journey about survival, identity, and what is left when everything familiar is stripped away.

For the people who survived me, shaped me, and kept me from losing my damn mind, and for everyone who learned life the long way around. Twelve short chapters of plain common sense: consequences are real, emotions are not facts, red flags are not decorations, boundaries are not rude, therapy is great but accountability is better, and nobody is coming to save you. Funny where it can be, honest where it has to be.

The HOA does not just run the neighborhood. The HOA is the neighborhood: a group of adults who gather voluntarily to enforce rules nobody asked for, like the PTA and the IRS had a baby that grew up to police the color of your mailbox. A comic anthropology of modern suburban life, taking on lawns as identity, Costco migration patterns, the fitted sheet crisis, the emotional support houseplant you are going to kill, and what all of it looks like from a trailer park and a 94 Bounder.

Out of the ashes of a devastating war, a broken princess and a warrior prince must forge a new legacy—or watch four kingdoms burn

**A secret kept in the dark. A love born in the fire.** **Ava Carter** spent four years away from her small hometown, drowning in the grueling, high-stakes rotations of nursing school. She survived by focusing entirely on her career, trying to ignore the lingering memories of the boy she left behind—the one who watched over her the night before she left, promising he'd never run. **Jaxon Hale** is a rugged, dedicated career firefighter, the city engine station's finest, and completely untouchable. He's also Ava's brother's best friend. Ever since a devastating family tragedy shattered Jaxon's world, he's been anchored to the Carter family by a fierce, unconditional bond of brotherhood. For years, the boundaries were simple, strict, and safe. Jaxon was the protective older brother figure. Ava was the off-limits kid sister. But when Ava graduates and permanently returns home to Summit Springs, the comfortable lines of their childhood completely dissolve. A stolen glance across a crowded room shifts into a shared blanket on a quiet evening, a lingering touch, and an undeniable adult attraction that threatens to burn their entire world to the ground. They know the stakes. They know the rules. Sneaking around behind her brother's back feels like the ultimate betrayal of the trust that keeps Jaxon alive on the fire lines. But some fires can't be contained, no matter how hard you fight to smother the embers. When a catastrophic midnight emergency summons Jaxon to the front lines, the secrets are brutally exposed, forcing a fractured family to face the ultimate test of survival, trust, and forgiveness. Can a love forged in secret survive the heat of the fire? **Why readers are falling for this book:** - **The Ultimate Off-Limits Trope:** A deeply emotional, high-stakes *Brother's Best Friend / Best Friend's Sister* contemporary romance. - **Pure, Agonizing Slow Burn:** Years of hidden pining, emotional long-distance texts, and intense mutual protection that makes the eventual intimacy completely explosive. - **High-Stakes First Responder Action:** Authentic, detailed descriptions of life-or-death nursing rotations and grueling firefighting simulations that will leave your heart pounding. - **Complete Family Healing:** A powerful, mature focus on male friendship, unconditional brotherhood, and earned forgiveness. *Contains a guaranteed, unburdened Happily Ever After (HEA) with no cliffhangers.*

<u>No AI was used in the writing of this work of purely human imagination.</u> In Dominion, you don’t know whether you are pretty or ugly until you are fifteen. Not officially, anyway. It comes as no surprise to Rissa Marlow when she rated AP—Aesthetically Prohibited. She’s ugly, after all. Not stupid. The surprise comes when she arrives at ARC Three—Ugly Camp—to begin training for either a life of labor in the Corporations or a much shorter life in her nation’s endless war with the Enemies. Everything changes though when Rissa finds herself the unwilling leader of a group of fellow Aps ordered on a mission to find a madman operating without official sanction deep in the Forbidden Zone. But one more surprise awaits: Cannen Ramsey, a beautiful Aesthetically Optimal boy will be joining this impossible mission. Their journey down the Desert Sea is fraught with peril. Violent weather, dangerous animals and even more dangerous people greet them around every bend. But for the first time in her life, Rissa finds friendship. With cheerful Birdie, stoic Tree, and even with the arrogant Ettie and the unpredictable Shora. And as the reluctant adventurers are drawn deeper into the desert something even stronger seems to be growing between Cannen and her Only when Rissa finally comes face-to-face with the man whose command she has been ordered to terminate does she begin to learn the terrible truth. About him. About her country. About herself. While virtually everything Rissa thought she knew turns out to be lies perpetrated by the government, the corporations and even by her own parents, now she learns that the madman has found something here in the wasteland. Something ancient. Something horrific. Something deadly. On this journey into the very heart of darkness Rissa may have to sacrifice everything including those she has come to trust, respect—and love.

Personal Development / Business Strategy / Entrepreneurial Mindset♟️ The Core PremiseTRUISMS is a raw, tactical lifestyle manual designed to deprogram independent creators, artists, and entrepreneurs from systematic societal conditioning. Written from the perspective of a veteran music executive who spent over two decades navigating the volatile trenches of the entertainment industry, the book rejects passive, comforting self-help clichés. Instead, it delivers a blunt, aggressive philosophy: approaching life and business like a Grandmaster playing high-stakes chess rather than a casual game of checkers.The book’s central theme is captured by its primary visual identity—a massive granite chess King standing firmly on a dividing line between a gritty, dark urban alleyway and a grand, classical marble library. This represents the ultimate transition from survival-based street hustle to executive-level administrative mastery.

**Sometimes the journey that breaks your heart is the one that leads you home.** *Journeys of the Heart* is an uplifting women’s fiction series about love, loss, friendship, forgiveness, and the unexpected ways our lives can be transformed when we find the courage to begin again. At the heart of the series are women facing circumstances they never imagined – betrayal, grief, regret, loneliness, and life-changing loss. Yet within those difficult seasons, they discover something they never expected: hope. Through friendship, faith, creativity, and the healing that comes from helping others, they learn that even the most painful chapters of our lives can lead to beautiful new beginnings. Set against the warmth of Florida, *Journeys of the Heart* celebrates the families we are born into and the families we create along the way. Its characters remind us that forgiveness can set us free, purpose can emerge from pain, and it is never too late to open our hearts to love, joy, and possibility. Filled with heartfelt friendships, second chances, touches of romance, and stories of ordinary people making an extraordinary difference in one another’s lives, *Journeys of the Heart* is ultimately a celebration of hope, and a reminder that sometimes the life waiting for us is even more beautiful than the one we had planned.

*But Every Day I’m Their Mama* is an honest and emotional look at motherhood beyond the picture-perfect moments. Teanna Askew explores what it means to keep showing up for your children when life is exhausting, support is limited, and the responsibilities never seem to stop. From advocating for children with different needs to navigating schools, relationships, financial pressure, job hunting, absent support, and the everyday demands of raising a family, this book gives a voice to mothers who quietly carry more than most people ever see. This isn’t a story about being a perfect mother. It’s about being present. It’s about the nights you cry privately and still get up the next morning. It’s about fighting for your children while trying not to lose yourself. Above all, it is about a simple truth: life may be difficult, motherhood may be overwhelming, and some days may feel impossible—but every day, **I’m still their mama.**

I believe the only civilization who was right in God's eyes were the natives to North America. Who's land was savagely stolen!  Everything we need is here on this earth in it's true useful form.  If the earth didn't make it  You shouldn't take it!  EVERYONE LIES!! EVERYONE!! AND IF YOU'RE LIKE ME YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHEN THEY DO! IT REALLY IS A CURSE IN THIS WORLD TODAY, CUZ ITS USUALLY OVER STUPID SHIT!  IT JUST MEANS THEY ARE NOT MATURE ENOUGH TO BE HONEST AND OWN THEIR FEELINGS.  INTEGRITY IS SO RARE TODAY. SO ARE HONESTY AND LOYALITY THEY DON'T EXSIST!  We were not meant to work 9 to 5 jobs 60 hrs a week just to pay the bills. Which doesn't anymore. Our family should have been our lives. Raising growing and schooling ourselves not some day care school or nanny!  Alot of younger people Gen x n z are tired of spending their time working or maintenance or cleaning on their property with no leftover time.  They are going to Tiny homes which are modern horse n wagons. Some all self contained just as we should be. Depending on only our tribe! These communities are growing all over the USA!  We would have saved our earth from it's self [destruction.by](http://destruction.by) not allowing the envy of false prosperity our wealth and innovation. But we are here now we can still survive and thrive in this world with the proper knowledge...I've put it all in one place! Health hacks, life hacks, family hacks, wealth hacks and everything else in between!  Finding and living your authentic self is our greatest achievement in our life!  I WISH YOU WELL ON YOUR JOURNEY!

In the land of make believe king BORIS and QUEEN JENNY decides to do something different for their birthday the send Princess Paige Louise and her steed BJ - to get gifts for their loyal subjects.they go on a adventure meeting friends along the way and get lost spending all the money the king and queen gave them and then they meet malachi the magpie.and he shows them the land of free and save the day for the two friends.

WARNING: This story contains themes of domestic abuse, loneliness, torture, and love.     Life must go on when Ariana Vernan's parents pass away, even if it means moving to a new country and leaving old memories behind.   Unaware of the monsters in disguise she calls family, Ariana begins to suffer abuse from her three brothers behind closed doors.   Whether at school, where no one knows her, or at home, where she's abused, Ariana lives under a fake identity, Apple Rye, and leads a lonely life.   But when she has to share a room with Roman Vault, the principal's son and her brother's best friend, on a school trip, could it change her life forever?

Follow the journey of Crystilline Heiwa Yuy as she discovers her ties to a Japanese Mafia family and how she turns tradition on its head. Crystilline is no ordinary princess who sits within a tower, waiting to be rescued. She will rescue herself.

Anya Springfield has spent her entire life running. Dragged from town to town by a mother desperate to keep them hidden, Anya has learned one painful truth: people are drawn to her—sometimes in dangerous ways. New schools, broken friendships, and constant upheaval are all she’s ever known. So when she arrives in a quiet town for what feels like yet another temporary stay, she vows to keep her head down and survive senior year unnoticed. But this town is different. Almost immediately, Anya finds herself surrounded by an unlikely group of boys unlike anyone she has ever met—Felix, Galen, Connor, and Griffin—each mysterious, fiercely protective, and strangely familiar. Along with their enigmatic guardian, Audric, they seem to know things about her no stranger should know. More unsettling still, they believe Anya is something impossible: A goddess. As buried memories begin to surface and the truth behind her painful past unravels, Anya discovers she may be tied to an ancient power older than memory itself—the Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. But awakening to her destiny comes with a price. Dark forces from her past are closing in, desperate to claim the power within her before she can understand it herself. Caught between fear and destiny, healing and heartbreak, Anya must decide who she truly wants to be: the frightened girl always running… or the powerful woman she was always meant to become. **A heartfelt blend of contemporary fantasy, found family, healing from trauma, and elemental magic, *Maiden Mother Crone* is a coming-of-age story about reclaiming your voice, embracing your power, and discovering that family isn’t always the one you’re born into.**

Wren is three when her mother asks who she wants to live with. It is not a question. It is a trap, and the answer she cannot say splits her childhood in two. What follows is the story of a girl who learned to read rooms before she could read words, and the people who saw her when her mother would not.

THE SPOKEN WORDS OF PATRICK SARAK SANG  Written in the land of California, in the Americas, in the year two thousand and twenty-six, being the forty-first year of the life of Patrick Sarak Sang, son of Sarak Sang and Vannareth Sam Sang, of the Khmer and American peoples, a witness of these things  THE FIRST BOOK & SECOND BOOK    Book 1 - God Book 2 - America, The World & A God Who Keeps His Promises

### Motivate to Manifest: Change the Thought. Shift the Pattern  Have you ever felt like life is happening *to* you, rather than *for* you? You wake up, grind through the day, and hope for a better tomorrow, yet find yourself in the same loops of anxiety, scarcity, or unfulfilled desires. I was there, too. But what if I told you that you possess a built-in mechanism—a divine, logical, and practical superpower—to rewrite your story?  Manifestation is not about magic tricks or waiting for luck. It is the conscious art of aligning your internal state, your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs—with the external reality you wish to experience. It is about moving from a life of default to a life of design. In this book, we will break down the myth that you are passive in your own life and unlock the tools to turn your wildest dreams into tangible reality. You are the creator of your reality; it’s time to start acting like it."  Change Your Direction Manifestation isn’t simply about wishing for something and waiting for it to appear. It’s about becoming intentional with your thoughts, beliefs, choices, and actions. That is the heart of *Motivate to Manifest*. It’s an invitation to look inward, challenge the thoughts that may be keeping you stuck, and begin moving toward a life filled with greater purpose and abundance. **Change the Thought.**\ **Shift the Pattern.**\ **Change Your Direction.** ### Small Shifts. Big Alignment. ✨ Ready to begin? 📖 **Discover *Motivate to Manifest* at [venusperez.com](http://venusperez.com)** **Order your copy today and begin your transformation.** [**<u>GET THE BOOK</u>**](https://authors.tertulia.com/venusperez-drafte9ghjz) **#MotivateToManifest #VenusPerez #Manifestation #WhatIsManifestation #MindsetShift #IntentionalAction #Mindfulness #PersonalGrowth #SpiritualGrowth #AlignedAction**

Alexander Knight, known to his family and close associates as Ak was devastated after the unexpected death of his father Big K. After his father's death he would inherit a Multi County Drug distribution ring ,that drew in hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly.Hoeever, the nheritance would come with alot more then he had bargain for.The Federal Government (by way of the United States Attorneys Office) would reinact an investigation on Ak, that had went cold after Big Ks death. Ak's cousin would find himself in a brush with the law where he would cooperate against Ak for a lighter sentence after being busted in his own drig related offences.Indicted by the feds Ak would eventually be sentenced to Ten years incarceration.While inside he would question his direction of his life .He would be released early for satisfactory behavior and be transported to a federal work release center .It was here where he would meet Anastasia the young daughter of one of Columbia's Cartel families.He would become a favorite of the Jefe and be place in a position that he never thought he would obtain at the street level.Unbeknowest to him that on the spiritual realm there was a show down between God Almighty and the Enemy.Satan understood Ak"s pattern of thinking and would continue to use the root of all evil to Rob Ak of his most important asset.His soul .Would be fall in Satan's trap or would he become one of the very few who finds Redemption?

A previously unknown species of seahorse is discovered by oceanologist Drew Boone and his daughter Karissa in the small New England coast town of Seaside Cove. Karissa is a troubled little girl, anti-social and withdrawn since her parent’s divorce. She is with her father for their summer visitation to stay with him and his mother. Karissa is the first of the coast kids to make contact with Star, a sea creature who is a unique hybrid of a seahorse and a normal horse. Drew speculates Star is the result of seismic activity that has been occurring around an offshore oil drilling platform. Karissa is brought out of her shell by her friendship with Star. She soon becomes the envy of the other coast kids. Before long more kindred seahorses join Star on land from the underwater passage. Every coast kid claims their own seahorse like a family pet. The parents turn to Drew for answers regarding these beguiling visitors. Overnight he becomes a seahorse authority of sorts. One of the children attracts the attention of the oil company president, Martin Thompson, who owns the offshore drilling site. Thompson sees him when he is out riding his seahorse on the ocean. Thompson tracks all of the seahorses in town and confiscates them. He puts them in glass tanks and plans to open an aquatic theme park which will feature the seahorses as its main attraction. The children are heartbroken and their parents are helpless to do anything in light of Thompson’s legal possession of the seahorses. The seahorses are miserable being cut off from the outside world and their youthful companions. Karissa organizes the coast kids into a peaceful protest of the theme park. On it’s opening day the children stand in a “ chain of life “ at the entrance to the seahorse attraction and garner major media interest. Infuriated, Thompson uses the police to run them off. The opening of the theme park is disrupted by the appearance of Father, a gargantuan 250 foot tall seahorse. A tidal wave generated from his surfacing smashes the park. Karissa is put in jeopardy by the resulting flood but is saved from drowning by Star. Father gathers his seahorse family and they return to their home at the bottom of the sea. Karissa is reunited with her father and grandmother. The community of Seahorse Cove unite to expose Thompson as the cause for all of the problems and run him out of town. One day while she is on her father’s research boat, Karissa is reunited with Star, who returns to her in a Pegasus like form. Their friendship is far from over.

## SHE WASN'T LOOKING FOR A BREAK. SHE WAS RUNNING FROM A STALKER.  Sloane Mitchell has everything. Wealth, success, a picture-perfect life. But beneath the surface, she's suffocating. When she meets Harper Grey, a woman who looks uncannily like her, Harper makes an irresistible offer: swap lives for three weeks. No strings attached. Just a chance to escape.  What begins as a thrilling adventure becomes a descent into terror. Because Harper didn't tell Sloane the truth. She wasn't looing for a break from her boring life - she' was running from a stalker who has been watching her every move for almost a year. A man named Jared Mills who doesn't just follow his victims. He owns them. ###  She's The Stranger She Became.

After being robbed by the caravan meant to guide him across the vast desert, an affluent man is left to die beneath an indifferent sun. As starvation, dehydration, and isolation erode his body, his mind begins to fracture alongside it. To survive the unbearable agony, he recounts the life he left behind: a refined home, a kind wife, and a brilliant but cruel son whose arrogance he believes he cultivated through years of emotional distance. The desert strips him apart piece by piece. Hallucinations blur the boundaries between memory and imagination. He agonizes over the man he should have been and for the son he believes he destroyed. Part survival story, part psychological horror, and part tragedy, this story follows a dying man whose journey across the unforgiving desert becomes a devastating confrontation with memory, guilt, and identity. Exploring the way shame reshapes memory, the stories we tell ourselves to survive our own failures, and whether redemption remains possible once every illusion has been stripped away.

So I feel like what inspired me to write this as someone who has been through really bad relationships, addiction issues, self-harm, loss, attempts, being locked up, losing myself trying to save other people, homelessness, bad self-image, loss of children terrible abuse that should happen to no one ever. I want my books to give people of all ages. that just because you have been broke doesn't mean you're broken. Just because you were given battles does not mean you give up because everything gets better and it doesn't always stay bad forever. I want people to connect not just on a mental level but to actually feel everything I have said and to know that all the emotions of hate, love , guilt ,shame ,peace ,fear ,distress , and hopefulness does not mean that their story hasn't ended and that it's just starting to take off. Because I remember thinking multiple times I will never get through this or I am not strong enough then I have to remember if I never went through the stuff I went through, I would have never become the person I am today. but yes, i have lost people along the way but that just means they weren't met to stay for the long run. They were met to be there for a lesson and to grow and that perfectly fine. Cause you're going to look at your and say that was worth it cause look at me now.

# *Lyra Wilde: The Celestial Runaway* Lyra Wilde has spent most of her life believing that leaving is the purest form of freedom. She chose her own name, built a livelihood from tarot readings, sign painting, festival work, and practical problem-solving, and made a home inside Vega, her weathered turquoise Ford Econoline. Moving between desert fairs and temporary communities allows her to be useful without becoming dependent, remembered without being completely known, and gone before affection can turn into obligation. At a late-season fair, Lyra meets Silas Walker, the nationally recognized former frontman of The Dust Meridian. He carries a battered harmonica, the consequences of a public collapse, and a recovery from addiction and depression that he refuses to place in anyone else’s hands. Silas does not ask Lyra to rescue him, surrender her independence, or abandon the road. He simply sees the difference between choosing freedom and disappearing before anyone has the chance to matter. Their attraction develops slowly through music, restraint, sharp humor, and unexpected honesty. A first encounter ends without a kiss or exchanged promises, leaving them separated by six months and hundreds of miles. When their roads cross again, curiosity becomes desire, and desire becomes a relationship neither of them can keep safely temporary. But loving Silas exposes every contradiction Lyra has spent years avoiding. She demands honesty while withholding the information that might make someone ask her to stay. She protects other people’s privacy while recording their stories in her notebooks. She resents being controlled but becomes controlling when fear convinces her that usefulness is the same as love. Most dangerously, she wants Silas to respect her freedom while secretly hoping he will prove she matters by chasing her. When Lyra disappears after an emotionally difficult night at Ghost Camp, she discovers that leaving may protect her from confrontation, but it cannot protect a relationship from consequences. Trust must be rebuilt through more than apologies. Their carefully written Terms of Return are tested by Vega’s breakdown, financial differences, unauthorized photographs, Silas’s returning public visibility, a recurrence of his depression, and work opportunities that pull them toward different roads. Around them, a loose collection of artists, vendors, musicians, travelers, and wounded people begins becoming something more permanent: the Half Moon Caravan. As Lyra helps build a community where people can be known without becoming public property, she must accept responsibility, establish boundaries, and return to conversations she would once have escaped. *Lyra Wilde: The Celestial Runaway* is a lyrical contemporary romance about found family, difficult trust, recovery, privacy, and love without ownership. It is the story of a woman who knows how to survive alone and the man who never asks her to stop moving—but challenges her to stop mistaking disappearance for freedom. Lyra’s journey does not end with the surrender of her independence. It ends with something more difficult: two people choosing separate roads, making room for individual dreams, and promising to return—not because either one is trapped, but because love has finally become a destination they are free to choose.

Thomas Rogers had resigned himself to a life of obscurity, preferring to fade into the background. One day, he stumbled upon a single wish that held the power to alter his destiny. Suddenly, he's transported to a different world, where he's frantic to find a path back home.

This story was inspired

At nineteen, faith is no longer something she can simply inherit--it must become something she chooses, questions, and wrestles for herself.  *Nineteen* is a poetic short novel told through nineteen poems, written by a nineteen year old girl. Woven with Scripture, honest reflection, and the tension between herself and becoming, this intimate collection explores the questions that surface when growing up means confronting pain, identity, purpose, and God all at once.  Raw, vulnerable, and deeply personal, *Nineteen* is for anyone who is willing to face the truth.

### Strong Body, Calm Mind **A Beginner’s Guide to Strength, Yoga, and Confidence for Busy Moms** You’re taking care of everyone else. Your calendar is full, your energy is stretched thin, and somehow your own body keeps landing at the bottom of the list. But taking care of yourself doesn’t have to mean waking up at 5 a.m., spending hours at the gym, or following another all-or-nothing fitness plan. **Strong Body, Calm Mind** is a realistic guide to getting stronger, moving better, and feeling more at home in your body, without adding more overwhelm to your already busy life. Inside, you’ll learn how to combine **strength training, yoga, mobility, flexibility, balance, and functional movement** into simple workouts and routines that fit into real life. This isn’t about chasing perfection, shrinking your body, or squeezing one more thing onto your to-do list. It’s about building a body that can keep up with your life, developing the confidence to trust what you’re capable of, and finding a calmer, more sustainable approach to fitness. Whether you’re brand new to exercise, starting over after years of putting yourself last, or simply looking for a better way to stay strong and active, **Strong Body, Calm Mind** will help you create a fitness practice that supports the woman you are, not the woman you think you’re supposed to be. **Because you don’t need to become a different version of yourself to be strong. You just need to start showing up for the one you already are.**

Cadence Maxwell does not have a happily every after. She has an abusive one with her husband, Ray. Something strange happens during these times. Sometimes the water responds to her or so she thinks. Is she delusional or does she really have control over water.

To those who have felt the crushing weight of societal expectations, the seductive whisper of digital validation, and the gnawing ache for a life that feels undeniably *real*. This story is for the dreamers caught in the gilded cage, for the navigators of blurred lines and curated realities, and for anyone who has ever questioned the actual cost of chasing a dream that glitters but may not satisfy. May you find your own truth beyond the screen, your own voice in the silence, and your own irreplaceable worth in the quiet spaces between the curated moments. May this narrative serve as a mirror, a cautionary tale, and ultimately, a beacon of hope for those seeking genuine connection and a life lived with authenticity and courage. To the unwritten chapters of your own story, may they be filled with purpose, peace, and the undeniable beauty of simply being.  Curated Self: The idealized, often selective, presentation of an individual's life,\ particularly on social media platforms, designed to elicit positive external validation.\ Digital Footprint: The trail of data left behind by a user's online activity, encompassing\ everything from browsing history to social media posts and digital transactions.\ Fulfillment: A state of deep satisfaction and contentment derived from living a life\ aligned with one's values and authentic self, rather than the pursuit of external validation\ or idealized outcomes.\ Societal Pressures: The external expectations and norms imposed by society regarding\ success, appearance, behavior, and lifestyle, often amplified by digital platforms.\ Vulnerability: The quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of attack or harm,\ either physical or emotional; in the context of relationships, it refers to the willingness to\ share one's true thoughts and feelings, even those that are imperfect or uncertain.

To the seekers of wisdom, the tireless questioners of existence, and the diligent builders of a more enlightened world. This work is a testament to the enduring power of foundational principles, gleaned from the echoes of antiquity and offered as a compass for our contemporary journey. May these Articles of Life illuminate your path, sharpen your discernment, and inspire you to contribute your unique verse to the grand, unfolding narrative of human civilization. May your inner kingdom be well-governed, your community bonds strengthened by unwavering morals, and your understanding of the cosmos deepened by the profound mysteries that lie both within and beyond. To those who tirelessly strive to balance the scales of justice, to preserve the sanctity of knowledge, and to learn from the grand tapestry of history, this book is humbly offered. It is for the scholars who humbly begin their quest, the masters who grapple with the complexities of ethical living, and the seekers who gaze into the infinite possibilities of existence, daring to understand our place within the celestial dance. May you find within these pages not mere information, but illumination; not simply knowledge, but wisdom; and not just guidance, but the courage to embody the timeless truths that have guided humanity towards meaning, order, and enduring prosperity since the dawn of time. This is a tribute to the enduring spirit of inquiry, the profound capacity for growth, and the unyielding human desire to live a life of purpose, integrity, and transcendence. This book is for the following: Readers interested in philosophy and ethics. Those who enjoy exploring foundational moral and societal principles, the nature of good governance, and the pursuit of a meaningful life will find the in-depth exploration of the Articles of Life compelling. Students of comparative religion and mythology. Individuals fascinated by the blend of biblical narratives (Enoch), ancient legal codes (Hammurabi), and mythological references will appreciate the synthesis of these elements. Readers seeking a structured and wisdom-driven narrative. The book's organized structure of articles and progression levels will appeal to readers who enjoy clear frameworks for understanding complex concepts and a journey towards self-improvement and transcendence. Academics and researchers of ancient law and governance. The detailed inclusion and analysis of Hammurabi's Code, alongside other historical and philosophical underpinnings of civilization, make it valuable for scholarly exploration.

Mira Thakur has spent most of her life learning how to make herself small. Orphaned young and raised in her uncle’s home in the hill town of Shimla, she divides her days between college, family obligations, and the tiny bookshop she loves. Her parents left her an inheritance—but an old-fashioned condition keeps it beyond her control: **She cannot take charge of it until she marries.** Then a violent storm sends Kian Dutt through the bookshop door. Kian is heir to one of India’s most powerful industrial families—brilliant, charming, wealthy, and dangerously accustomed to solving problems his own way. Mira doesn’t recognize him. For once, Kian likes it that way. One rain-soaked evening becomes walks through Shimla, cups of tea, private jokes, long conversations, and a slow-growing intimacy neither of them expected. Then Kian discovers something Mira doesn’t know. The land his development project desperately needs belongs to her. And marriage is the one condition that would finally give her control over it. **He wants Mira.\ She wants her freedom.\ His project needs her land.** To Kian, one impossible idea begins to look almost elegant: marry the woman he already wants, give her the freedom she has been denied, and negotiate for the land afterward. The problem is not that his feelings are false. The problem is that the secret is real. What begins as an intimate slow-burn romance in the mountains becomes a story about love, ambition, betrayal, separation, growth, and whether two people can ever find their way back to each other after the truth changes everything they thought they knew.

Lara has always known who she is. At least, she thought she did. As her birthday approaches, small fractures begin appearing in the life she has always considered ordinary. A strange scar she can’t explain. Dreams that feel more like memories. A symbol she recognizes despite having no idea where she’s seen it before. And glimpses of a place that shouldn’t exist—but somehow feels familiar. Then reality begins answering back. The harder Lara tries to hold on to what she knows, the more impossible it becomes to ignore the feeling that something has been buried inside her for a very long time. Something older than memory. Something waiting. Because Lara isn’t simply discovering another world. She’s beginning to remember who she was before this one.

A broken-down van. A hollow that's not on any map. A family that doesn't let strangers leave. When their van breaks down deep in the Appalachian mountains, five electricians stumble into Craggy Dean Hollow looking for nothing more than a spare hose and a way back to the road. What they find instead is a wedding, a shotgun, and a father who's decided one of them is about to become his son-in-law - whether they want to or not.   New Chapters Saturdays at 4pm EST.

**The War of First Light** is a sweeping fantasy saga about the fall of a luminous civilization, the scattering of its people, and the unlikely alliances forged when an ancient darkness threatens to consume far more than one world. What begins beneath the twin moons of Aelaria soon expands into a struggle that draws together humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and the surviving Aelari against Zharu’un, a cosmic force of corruption and hunger. As old rivalries collide with new loyalties, scholars become survivors, champions rise from distant peoples, and friendships are tested by sacrifice, betrayal, and war on a mythic scale. At its heart, *The War of First Light* is a story about what remains when certainty fails: faith, memory, fellowship, and the courage to stand when victory seems impossible. It is the first great saga of **Faded Legends**, a world of ancient histories, forgotten civilizations, and stories recovered from ages long past.

For fifty years, Earl has known how to make things disappear. At the far edge of his farm, where the grass gives way to red clay, the burn pile has swallowed a lifetime of old papers, worn clothes, forgotten belongings—and things better left unnamed. Four days after burying his wife, Maren, Earl returns to the pile to honor one of her final requests: **Don’t let it go cold. There’s still things that need burning.** But something beneath the ash refuses to burn. And as Earl begins to dig, the past he's spent half a century reducing to smoke starts giving things back. **Some things survive the fire. Some things wait.**

**The Hollow Bond Series** is a dark, seductive romantasy series where ancient magic, supernatural bonds, and dangerous love collide. Deep within the mysterious Hollow, the forest is more than trees and shadows—it is alive, powerful, and it remembers. Witches, wolf shifters, ancient guardians, forbidden magic, and forces that should have remained buried become tangled in bonds shaped by fate but tested by choice. As old secrets surface and the boundary between worlds begins to fracture, love may prove to be either the greatest weapon of all—or the most dangerous weakness. Filled with fierce heroines, protective and powerful heroes, found family, fated mates, dark secrets, supernatural danger, passion, and plenty of magic, **The Hollow Bond Series** explores what happens when destiny chooses you before you're ready to choose it. *The Hollow is watching.* *The bonds are awakening.* *And some magic refuses to be denied.*

Permission is about my journey through years of abuse and finding my way through the darkness toward the light. It is a journey for anyone who has lived with childhood abuse.

**The Bridge** is not simply a memoir. It is an invitation to investigate the invisible foundations that shape every life. Through deeply personal stories spanning childhood trauma, family secrets, military life, failed rescue, hidden shame, and the long search for identity, Adrian never asks readers to simply witness his past. Every chapter becomes a bridge from his story to their own. Rather than asking, *"What happened to me?"* the book asks deeper questions: *What shaped me?* *What did I learn to believe?* *What patterns did I inherit?* *What do I want to hand forward?* Combining authentic storytelling with practical reflection, **The Bridge** introduces concepts such as the Fixed Point, Generation Zero, the Forensic Audit, and Companion Guides that help readers recognize the difference between survival and healing. This first volume (15 Chapters), **The Foundation**, explores the earliest experiences that quietly formed identity, trust, safety, shame, and resilience. It demonstrates that while we cannot change what was handed to us, we can decide what continues through us. **The Bridge** is written for anyone who has ever wondered why they respond the way they do, where those patterns began, and whether a different future is possible. Because healing does not begin by rewriting the past. It begins by understanding the foundation beneath it.

THE GODDESS OF EMBERS SERIES   She was never meant to be a goddess. He was never meant to love her.   Persephone Deimos thought the gods were myths.   Then the God of the Dead found her.   Pulled into a world of ancient magic, ruthless gods, forbidden desire, and deadly divine politics, Persephone discovers that there is something inside her the immortals have spent centuries trying to destroy.   Hades has ruled the Underworld for centuries. He knows monsters. He knows power. He knows exactly what happens when you let someone get close.   But Persephone is unlike anyone he has ever encountered.   As their dangerous attraction deepens, Persephone must uncover the truth behind her awakening power before the gods decide her fate for her. Because the Underworld is already stirring, Olympus is watching, and an ancient war is beginning to rise from the ashes.   She is the spark. He is the darkness.   And together, they may become the greatest threat the gods have ever known.   🔥 Begin the journey with Crowned in Ash, Book One of the Goddess of Embers series.   Six books. One forbidden love. A goddess forged in fire.

**M**ichelangelo believed the sculpture already existed within the marble. Mathematicians often speak of discovering truths rather than inventing them. Writers, too, like to say that characters "***took over***" or that a story "***wanted to be told.***" What if they are all describing the same phenomenon? Every possible story already exists as a potential arrangement of language, just as every sculpture exists as a potential form within stone. The author's gift is not the ability to create possibility but the ability to recognize coherence. An **<u>oeuvre</u>** is the complete body of work produced by an artist, writer, or composer over the course of their lifetime. It refers to their total output taken as a whole, rather than an individual piece. The oeuvre precedes the books in the same way that the sculpture precedes the chisel.

You are tired in a way that sleep cannot fix.   You are the woman who handles things. Who shows up. Who figures it out. You carry the career, the family, the household, the community — often all at once, often without anyone noticing, and almost always without anyone asking how you are doing.   You are extraordinary at all of it. And you are exhausted in a way that has stopped feeling temporary.   Holding It All is for the woman who has been holding everything together — and is finally ready to hold it differently.   Drawing on real research and deeply personal experience, bilingual community advocate and author Luz Molina takes you on an honest, warm, and deeply personal journey through:   Naming the invisible load — the cognitive, emotional, and physical labor that falls disproportionately on women and goes largely unseen Understanding where your roles came from — the family patterns, cultural expectations, and inherited beliefs that shaped who you became Releasing guilt, setting limits with love, and learning to say no without losing the people you care about Reclaiming your body, your rest, your voice, and your sense of self — not someday, but now Building the community, financial independence, and sustainable foundation that makes thriving possible Defining what thriving actually looks like for you — on your terms, in your life With bilingual tools and boundary scripts in both English and Spanish, Holding It All speaks to every woman who has ever said "Estoy bien" when she was anything but.   You don't have to put it all down. You just have to stop carrying it the same way.

To save her dying queen, an elven princess seeks a rare leaf—only to discover her kingdom's reckless policies caused the monsters hunting her.

When humanity discovers a breathtaking alien world rich with priceless resources, the United Offworld Enterprises sees only profit. To them, the planet is nothing more than another target for extraction, regardless of the intelligent civilization that already calls it home. Kaine, a human surveyor working for the corporation, arrives believing the mission is routine. But after being abandoned by his own team and left to die in the unforgiving wilderness, he is rescued by the very people he was sent to exploit: the Sorathi, a towering, vividly colored race whose world is shaped by imagination, ancient faith, and extraordinary creatures. Taken prisoner by the mountain-dwelling Sanctuari clan, Kaine finds himself caught between two civilizations. Branded an invader by the Sorathi and discarded by his own species, he must confront the consequences of humanity's greed while struggling to survive in a land where every mountain, forest, and sky hides deadly predators and forgotten mysteries. As trust slowly begins to grow between Kaine and the fierce Sanctuari warrior who captured him, he discovers that the greatest danger facing the world is not only the invading humans, but an ancient conflict that threatens to consume everything both peoples hold dear. Blending science fiction with epic fantasy, *The Gleaming World* is a story of redemption, unlikely love, cultural discovery, and the enduring power of justice, courage, and kindness in a universe where imagination itself gave birth to reality.

**What if the most powerful girl on the island was the one who couldn’t use magic?** Rose Grey is a 205-year-old sea nymph who looks twelve—and she has a problem. On the mysterious Isle of Lumiere, magic is everywhere, pirates hunt magical beings, and Rose is the only one of Poseidon’s daughters who seems to have been born without powers of her own. But Rose is far from ordinary. Armed with an invisibility cloak, a stubborn streak, and a talent for finding trouble, she is drawn into an adventure filled with dangerous pirates, a mischievous elf, ancient secrets, a mysterious sorceress—and one cigar-smoking monkey named Smokey. As pirates close in on the elusive sea nymph, they have come to call the **Phantom Nymph**, Rose begins to discover that the truth about who she is may be far stranger—and far more powerful—than anything she imagined. ***Rose Grey and Pirates, Nymphs, and A Smoking Monkey*** is a whimsical middle-grade fantasy adventure filled with mystery, humor, pirates, mythology, friendship, and a heroine searching for where she belongs. Written by **J. D. Milligan**.

Some people spend their lives running from the past. Casey Oakley has spent hers surviving it. One violent act shatters the life she thought she knew, setting her on a path filled with betrayal, heartbreak, impossible choices, and relentless danger. Every time she begins to rebuild, another enemy rises, determined to tear it all away. But Casey refuses to stay broken. Surrounded by the unwavering love of her brothers and the fierce loyalty of the friends who stand beside her, she discovers that true strength isn't measured by the battles you've lost, but by the courage to rise every time life knocks you down. From the dust of the rodeo arena to the fight for a future worth believing in, Casey's journey is one of resilience, sacrifice, justice, and hope. As old wounds reopen and new threats emerge, she must decide whether revenge is found in settling the score... or in refusing to let the darkness win. **The Revenge Series** is an unforgettable trilogy of survival, friendship, family, and the extraordinary strength of the human spirit. Filled with unforgettable characters, heart-pounding suspense, unforgettable romance, and hard-fought triumphs, this is the story of one woman who refuses to let anyone else write the ending to her life. **Some stories are about revenge.** **This one is about surviving long enough to earn it.**

*The Geometer* follows Marek, a man whose ordinary understanding of reality is shattered when he is drawn into a world governed by patterns, symbols, and impossible geometry. As he searches for answers, he discovers that geometry is not just a branch of mathematics, but the architecture beneath existence itself. Guided by enigmatic figures and pursued by forces he barely understands, Marek must learn to read the hidden structure of reality before it consumes him. Every revelation demands a sacrifice, and every step deeper into the pattern changes not only what he believes—but who he is. Part philosophical journey, part metaphysical adventure, *The Geometer* is a novel about perception, transformation, and the price of seeing the world as it truly is.

1. **“A man confronts his past, his pain, and his reflection—only to discover the person holding him back is himself.”**

Judah has given his all to the Roman legions. Having advanced from being a mere auxiliary to a mighty centurion in the regular legions, Judah has fought his way to glory all over the known world; from the great Romanized bastion, the Syrian-Greek city of Antioch, to the shores of barbarian Gaul. But, now, stationed in the Greek Isles, everything falls apart when his powerful friend and patron turns on him. Abandoned and alone, Judah decides to return to his native land, Judea, where he has been invited by an old childhood friend, he hasn’t seen in years, to join their struggle against the Roman yoke. The people of his native land have recently rose in rebellion seeking their freedom; a way out from under the thumb of Roman imperialism. Fighters are massing in Jerusalem and the leaders of the movement have even begun to issue their own coin. However, when the Roman campaign of reprisal finally begins, the rebels are proven to be no match for the Roman invaders. Before Judah even arrived, Vespasian and his legions have swept through the land like lightning, retaking the Galilee in under a year. Now, as Judah arrives home amongst his former people, he arrives to find Jerusalem already stands alone. Together with the Jerusalemites, he must revitalize a defeated cause. The situation he has entered could not have looked more grim. The factions in Jerusalem are eating each other alive, tearing each other apart in their quest for control over their nations course. Grizzled brigands have seized control from those who are reasonable minded. It seems, none of the powerful leaders left, are noble men. Under the looming prospect, of a siege, which surely must come, the quest to quell the brigands and marshal the spirit of Jerusalem is on. Judah will find, a stout sword arm is not enough, nor will his well trained military mind, alone, get him through the siege. He will need to learn local politics, if he expects to survive in Jerusalem and see this deadly struggle through, until the bitter end. As armed factions vie for power, there are still those in Jerusalem who seek to build a nation. Judah will discover, however, that not everybody in the holy city shares the same vision for what it means to be a Judean. In Jerusalem, they wrestle with important questions? Is shared ancestry enough to unite a fragmented people? Or does it take, a unified identity, or perhaps religion, to keep disparate groups together? however they solve the equation, the citizens of Jerusalem *must* come up with an answer; ***what does it take to forge a nation?*** Through it all, Judah is personally adrift, practically a stranger in his own country. It is a land bristling with strange habits and customs he hasn’t seen since childhood; brimming with a religious zeal of a kind, Judah hasn’t encountered in any of his many travels. As ever, Judah finds himself alone. Why does he sometimes feel he has neither a nation, nor a home? Will he always be a traveler in life whisking into one place and flying out in an array of violence. Is he destined to stand for nothing, to possess no identity? Read the book and find out How to build a nation but more importantly how to build a man! Oh, and of course remember, as Long as the great Temple stands how can Jerusalem fall?

## **Where They Begin** Since losing her husband and then both parents, Dee has quietly convinced herself that happiness is dangerous — that every joyful moment is simply another loss waiting to happen. Years of caregiving have taught her to rescue everyone except herself. She has become so skilled at surviving that she no longer knows how to choose joy. When she breaks one of her own emotional rules and watches an elderly woman dance with an invisible partner, long-buried grief begins to surface. Gary, also sixty-five and eleven years sober, has spent a lifetime running — from relationships, from vulnerability, and ultimately from Dee. Five years earlier they met aboard a cruise, fell deeply in love, and exchanged letters for months. But when his growing feelings challenged everything he believed about himself, fear won, and he simply disappeared. ## **The Reunion** When Gary sits down at Dee’s casino table, five years of longing collide with five years of heartbreak. Dee grants him one hour to explain, on one condition: complete honesty, especially when the truth makes him look bad. Every conversation becomes a test. Gary must prove through actions — not promises — that he has become someone capable of staying. AA becomes the unexpected blueprint for rebuilding love. In meetings aboard ship, Gary abandons the polished explanations that have protected him for years and confesses the truths most likely to cost him Dee, including the shame of imagining her waiting after he vanished. For the first time, telling the truth matters more to him than being forgiven. ## **The Turn** While Gary learns to stay, Dee must learn that her worth is not measured by how useful she is to others. Each day Gary asks a question no one has asked her in years: *When was the last time you did something simply because you wanted to?* She cannot answer. Two people illuminate her path. Lou, Dee’s fiercely loyal friend, challenges her to separate evidence from fear rather than let grief masquerade as wisdom. Sandra — the elegant woman dancing each evening with an invisible partner — reveals the novel’s deepest truth: loving again does not betray the dead. Love does not end. It changes form. ## **The Test** The turning point is not a misunderstanding but a series of chances to trust. On a beach with a hidden rip current, Gary risks his life to pull a drowning boy from the water while entrusting Dee to organize the rescue from shore — and for the first time she learns what it is to be trusted rather than only to rescue. Days later, on a zip line strung across a rainforest gorge, it is Dee’s turn: she has to let go of the cable and fall, on faith, with Gary waiting below. Trust, the novel insists, is built in ordinary acts repeated until they hold. The true climax comes when Dee falls hard on the ship’s pickleball court, breaking her ankle and her nose on the last days of the cruise. Gary — days from a national championship he has trained three years for — quietly withdraws to fly her home and see her settled, asking for neither recognition nor gratitude. The choice detonates a hidden conflict: his tournament partner and closest friend, who has quietly loved him for years, forces a reckoning that proves Dee right about her all along and costs Gary the person he thought knew him best. Watching him choose her and lose something real for it, Dee confronts her deepest fear — not losing Gary, but leaving first, before she can be hurt again. In the terminal she confesses that for one honest moment she hoped he would miss his flight, and telling the truth, rather than being reassured, is the point. ## **Where They Arrive** By the end of ten days, both have crossed the distance that truly matters. Gary learns that staying is the most courageous promise he can make. Dee finally abandons the belief that avoiding joy can somehow prevent loss; grief came anyway, and refusing happiness never protected her from it. On the flight home, her ankle in a cast, she places her hand in his — and lets herself, perhaps for the first time in years, receive love without believing she must earn it. Then the novel turns the story inside out. Then ending chapters present a major twist and readers are left to craft an answer to a final question.

**For twenty years, Stuart Grant stood inches from the spotlight while witnessing everything audiences were never supposed to see.**   **Remember, I’ve Seen You Naked: A Backstage Memoir pulls back the curtain on life behind some of America’s biggest touring theatrical productions. As a hairdresser, makeup artist, wardrobe professional, and quick-change expert, Stuart traveled from city to city helping performers become glamorous, heroic, terrifying, and occasionally presentable—often while complete chaos erupted around them.**   **Backstage, personal boundaries disappeared quickly. Actors undressed without hesitation, wigs malfunctioned at the worst possible moment, costume changes became full-contact sports, and conversations took turns no ordinary workplace would survive. Stuart found himself surrounded by outrageous personalities, unexpected hookups, touring disasters, sexual misadventures, nightclub escapades, and situations so absurd they could only have happened in show business.**   **But beneath the laughter is the story of a demanding and deeply intimate world built by people the audience rarely notices. It is also a remembrance of the friendships formed on the road, the people whose curtain came down too soon, and a career Stuart believed would last forever—until an injury abruptly took it away.**   **Candid, adult, darkly funny, and unexpectedly moving, Remember, I’ve Seen You Naked celebrates the people behind the scenery who make the magic happen, clean up the disasters, and return the next night to do it all again.**

The Inherited Silence follows Summer as she confronts the quiet legacy that shaped her life—an unspoken history passed down through generations, carried in gestures, memories, and the spaces where words should have lived. Growing up inside a silence she didn’t create, she learned early how to read what wasn’t said, how to survive on fragments, and how to hold together a story that never fully belonged to her. As an adult, the weight of that silence becomes impossible to ignore. When a long‑buried truth resurfaces, Summer is forced to examine the emotional architecture of her past: the patterns she repeated without understanding, the loyalties she inherited without choosing, and the questions she avoided because the answers felt too dangerous to touch. What begins as a search for clarity becomes an excavation—of memory, identity, and the hidden forces that shaped her family. Through lyrical honesty and unflinching introspection, The Inherited Silence traces the journey of a woman determined to break a generational pattern by finally naming what was never spoken. It is a memoir about the cost of carrying what isn’t yours, the courage required to confront what you were taught to ignore, and the moment when silence becomes a story you can no longer keep buried. At its heart, this is the story of one truth—carried for years, protected by silence, and finally ready to be told.

### [**Obey, or Fade Away** **You were always meant for more**](https://open.substack.com/pub/obeyfadeaway/p/3-for-the-ones-who-stayed-and-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=73fanv) \ The Arc So Far\ #1 — You Were Never Meant to Disappear opens the series with a confrontation: the reader has spent years learning to shrink, stay quiet, and erase their own edges in the name of safety. It names that erasure for what it is — not peace, but a slow kind of dying — and insists the reader was built with weight and voice, not built to fade into the background of their own life. \ #2 — The Four Possibilities Beyond the Light pushes past the initial awakening into the terrain that opens once someone stops hiding. It maps out the different paths available once the light (the signal, the recognition) has been seen — suggesting that awareness alone isn't the end point, but a fork with several possible directions, each with its own cost and its own truth. \ #3 — For the Ones That Stayed and the Witness Never Blinks shifts focus to endurance. It's written for the people who didn't leave, didn't disappear, didn't fade — the ones who stayed present through the discomfort. It introduces "the witness," an inner presence that tracks everything without judgment, watching to see whether the person will keep showing up for their own life even when nothing dramatic is happening. \ #4 — When the Silence Answers deals with the strange phase where nothing external responds, yet something still communicates. Silence itself becomes the message. This piece explores the discipline of sitting with unanswered questions long enough that the absence of an answer becomes its own kind of confirmation — training the reader to stop needing loud signs and start trusting the quiet ones. \ #5 — The Assignment names the responsibility that follows all that listening. Once someone has stayed, once they've heard the witness, once the silence has answered — they're handed something specific to do. This piece frames spiritual growth not as a feeling to chase but a task to complete: an assignment that requires real-world action, not just internal shifts. \ #6 — The Shape of a Real Response (Time and Time Again) ties the whole arc together. It explicitly revisits the earlier stages — staying present, hearing the silence answer, acting on what's known — and argues that all of those were prelude. The real test is whether the change can survive ordinary life: everyday , errands, people who don't know your mythology. It introduces the phrase "obey or fade away" as the central law of the series — not obedience as submission, but obedience as full listening that produces movement. Coherence, this piece argues, isn't a comfortable alignment; it has teeth. It costs relationships, unmasks false loyalties, and forces the inside and outside of a person to finally tell the same story. The piece closes on the idea that the witness from piece #3 becomes an internal architect, and that the ultimate demand isn't belief — it's response. \ Together, pieces #1–6 trace a single throughline: recognition, endurance, silence, duty, and finally, the demand for coherent action. Each piece raises the stakes on the one before it, moving the reader from "you matter" to "prove it with your life." \ #7 #8 & #9 coming soon !!!!  Obey Your Reasons to Refuse !!!!

When Mara Willow discovers a mysterious lantern that appears only during the rain, she finds herself drawn toward a world hidden beyond the ordinary. Guided by its strange glow, Mara journeys into the Gloam, a realm filled with forgotten secrets, ancient magic, and mysteries waiting to be uncovered.   Along the way, she encounters unexpected companions, a magical sea, and a forgotten truth that connects the lantern to a much larger destiny. But the path ahead is not without danger. To discover what the lantern truly means, Mara must confront her fears, unlock the secrets of the past, and learn that even the smallest light can shine through the darkest storms.

Wife was tired after church on Sunday and asked, "Why do we attend church on Sundays " I asked her, "What do we do on Sunday in church?" She listed a few, I prodded her for more. "That's all I know" she said, I gave her my list and she asked me to write them down.

In The Battle Angels, faith, fire, and family collide in a thrilling saga of celestial warriors and human struggle.   Emelie, a former Battle Angel, has built a quiet life—until dark forces reawaken and her twin daughters, Sofine and Delphine, discover powers they can’t control. As ancient enemies rise, Emelie must train her children to face a war between light and darkness while confronting the secrets she swore to hide.   Blending supernatural adventure and emotional depth, The Battle Angels is a story of courage, destiny, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and her warrior daughters.

*“First rule of being a Storm Chaser, don’t walk; stride. Second rule of being a Storm Chaser, don’t stride; **fly**.”*   Corbingiin Peregrine from Rook has always had her heart set on something bigger than the pastoral life surrounded by goats and horses she was born into. With her powers over the wind, water and electricity, Peri is determined to become a Storm Warden, masters of the three elements and the right hands of the Storm Warden General who rules over their large sprawling kingdom. To do so, she'll have to leave everything behind and start out as a Storm Novice, a student of the Storm Guard Academy in the Capital City. When she's told that she'll only be allowed to master wind, her natural element, due to her lack of nobility, Peri is determined to go around the rules being imposed upon her and keep her three skills sharp without the powers that be at the Academy knowing. The Academy's Instructor of Wind, Anirgiin Taymour from Ilhan, not only ignores Peri's drive to accomplish what only the nobility have been allowed to achieve, but actively encourages it - until she's taken away by the Watchers, the Storm Warden General's guard dogs, for interrogation. Left without a teacher she can trust, she seeks out one of the last of the Noble Houses from her own region at Taymours insistence, a reclusive healer named Narengiin Batu of Salhi, to aid her in her small rebellion and after wearing him down she acquires a grumpy yet effective teacher who, like Taymour, encourages her to not only hone her skills but to question everything around her for the betterment of her follow citizens. Between her training, her noble classmates looking down on her and a system that wants to keep her in her place, Peri is finding it hard to breathe, but if there's one thing a Storm Warden never runs out of it's wind. Fueled by her passion to become the first so called 'peasant Storm Warden', Corbingiin Peregrine from Rook is determined to not only succeed but soar higher than anyone ever has before.

Welcome to the Dome of Dreams aka the Dollhouse In a world where reality has become a twisted form of entertainment, Gia, an orphaned girl, finds solace in the escapist allure of Doll TV. This highly popular program offers a tantalizing glimpse into the lavish lives of the beautiful inhabitants of the Dollhouse – a domed utopian city where perfection reigns supreme. Gia's obsession with the show stems from a deep longing to escape the harsh realities of her own existence. Little does she know, her fervent wish is about to be granted in the most perverse way imaginable.

[ ](https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/ce736aae-7f24-44d6-8e7c-f7b42131d442/artifact/d695ab19-7099-4308-b6ce-42d01e2b5c2d?utm_source=nlmm_share)<https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/ce736aae-7f24-44d6-8e7c-f7b42131d442/artifact/d695ab19-7099-4308-b6ce-42d01e2b5c2d?utm_source>=nlmm_share

**Identity isn’t a story—it’s the structure that decides whether you rise or collapse.** When life erodes the floor beneath you, most reach for motivation. Andrew Carl Vincent Squires reached for architecture. Patterns of an Underdog Founder is a stark, unflinching field manual born from eviction notices, hospital rooms, and storage-unit nights—then rebuilt into a rigorous discipline that treats identity as infrastructure. Across four phases—Collapse, Clarity, Construction, and Contribution—Squires shows how underdogs engineer stability from scarcity, reclaim agency from drift, and version themselves with intention instead of inheritance. You won’t find pep talks here. You’ll find the Underdog Operating System, identity versioning, narrative architecture, and founder‑grade standards—practical scaffolding that turns survival into structure and structure into forward motion. Squires writes with the precision of a systems designer and the honesty of someone who had to build a blueprint before he could afford hope. Short chapters move quickly, translating heavy truths into usable frameworks: rebuilding foundations of stability, agency, clarity, and evidence; returning to voice after erosion; forging disciplined systems that carry you when willpower doesn’t; and converting lived experience into a transferable method. By the end, your story stops being personal and becomes structural—you’re not just standing again; you’re standing on something you can pass forward. This is Identity as Infrastructure. For One—and the first volume in a series that advances from self-governance to co-founded systems and beyond. If you’re rebuilding after everything went quiet—if you need more than inspiration—this book gives you architecture you can live inside. For Kindle or print, the promise is the same: clear language, tight pacing, and frameworks that fit on a page yet hold the weight of a life. Read it straight through or enter at the chapter you need most; either way, you’ll leave with a map you design, a system you govern, and a voice that doesn’t fade when pressure returns. **For readers of James Clear, Cal Newport, and Ryan Holiday who want not just better habits or ideas—but a load‑bearing identity they can build on.**

After the death of her beloved grandmother, botanist Evelyn Thorne returns to Moonshade Manor, a forgotten estate deep within the Louisiana wetlands that has been abandoned for generations.   While exploring the surrounding swamp, Evelyn discovers a flower unlike anything she has ever encountered. It blooms only at midnight, glows with an otherworldly light, and seems to recognize her. When she reaches out to touch it, a whisper breaks the silence:   "You came back."   Drawn into a mystery spanning more than a century, Evelyn uncovers hidden journals, a locked greenhouse, a vanished woman, and a forbidden love story that her grandmother spent a lifetime protecting. As long-buried family secrets emerge, she realizes the mysterious bloom is far more than a rare plant.   It is a doorway.   To uncover the truth, Evelyn must confront the past, unravel the curse that has haunted Blackwater Manor for generations, and decide whether some secrets should remain buried forever.   Filled with Southern Gothic atmosphere, unforgettable mysteries, and touches of magical fantasy, Bloom After Midnight is a story about family, love, sacrifice, and the hope that can blossom even after the darkest night.

Kaelin was bred for control, a subject engineered with a fragile spine augmented by ruthless technology. When the Cradle burns and her world shatters, she escapes into the inhospitable wasteland of Ashkaru with a silent, feverish child whose eyes see too much. The Drifting Truth, an old patched ship, becomes her sanctuary - but the Core reclamation teams are relentless, their reach stretching into the broken edges of space. As alliances shift and secrets emerge, Kaelin must navigate a maze of trust, technology, and survival. Will she protect those she loves, or become the weapon they made her to be?

Before the celebrations and legends, Patrick tells a story of captivity, escape, and faith.   Taken from his home and carried across the sea, a young Patricius must endure enslavement in Ireland and find a way to survive. As he journeys toward freedom and eventually returns to the land where he was held, hardship and faith shape the man he becomes.   Saint Patrick is a first-person creative historical narrative that draws on historical sources, including Patrick’s Confession, and imagines dialogue, emotions, and events to bring his story to life.

Maylene never asked to be dragged into another world where trees walk and objects have souls. She's just the clumsy friend tagging along while her bestie discovers that she's some fated princess with purification powers. Guiding them is a young prince thrust into leadership after his father's death, determined to help the princess save a world that is falling apart. But while everyone is focused on prophecies and duty, May can't stop hearing things. Whispers on the wind. Grumbles in the dirt. And an unidentified voice that won't stop complaining. The princess's older brother is drawn to a weapon that whispers temptations in his ear. A corrupted sorcerer keeps sending his soldiers to destroy or enslave any people they find. And the safe zone keeps shrinking. Will they return home safely, will they be discovered by the enemy, or will they be destroyed by their own powers before they can safely master them?

For eighteen years, the Fae wanted her dead. She never knew why.\ When Aryis crosses the boundary into the human realm, she expects to find safety. Instead, she finds a red-haired man with mismatched eyes who speaks her language and asks too many questions. She finds a tavern full of secrets. And she finds something stirring inside her that she cannot name.\ Something ancient. Something powerful. Something they were right to fear.

This book is a rebellion against everything women have been told about aging. We’ve been trained to shrink our lives. To accept decline as destiny. This book says no more. Joan Maiden ignites a revolution—calling women to reclaim their strength, passion, and power. Not someday. Not “when it’s appropriate.” Now. Inside, you’ll shed fear, reject false limits, rediscover your fire, and rise as the leader of your own life— fierce, awake, and unapologetic. You are not done. You are not invisible. Live fully. You’re Not Too Old. It’s Not Too Late.F\*ck old age. Embrace LIFE. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.—George Eliot

Being sixteen can be Hell. For Sarah, every day is the same. Keep up with the grades. Stay on top of the cleaning and laundry around their cramped apartment. Friends? Boys? If her mom found out, her rage would follow. For as long as Sarah could remember, it’s always been her and her mom. Stories of her dad’s untimely death hold their own questions.\ \ So long as her chores get done and she stays close to home, everything’s sunny. Otherwise, she might feel the wrath of her mom’s love.\ \ That all changes when Sarah’s great aunt leaves her a mysterious journal in her will. Its pages tell tales of a missing brother’s adventures, riding the rails in the 1930s. The further Sarah delves into the events surrounding him, the closer she gets to uncovering her own past. As the truths of her great uncle’s disappearance come to light, she unearths the skeletons hidden in her mom’s closet.\ \ Then, there’s Collin. The boy she’s had a crush on for years picks now of all times to ask her out. Juggling a boyfriend and a relationship on top of everything else could push her and her mother to their breaking point.\ \ Sparks will fly on Sarah’s journey to independence and healing. One boy’s journey across Great Depression America could hold the key to setting her free. Sarah needs to find him in time to get to the truth before time takes another relative and his secrets to the grave.

Who killed the Kings son? Where is the Princess? Secrets concealed and revealed.

"12 Meditations for a Broken Heart" offers a transformative journey through heartache, guiding readers to heal from loss and emotional pain. Divided into three categories—Daily Maintenance, CPR for Emotional Heart, and Creating A Future—these meditations provide practical tools to rewrite one's consciousness and nurture a healthier relationship with oneself. Embrace the opportunity to cultivate resilience and reconnect with the world around you as you breathe, reflect, and grow.

Caleb Monroe survived the war, but he did not come home whole. After an ambush near Ghazni costs him his right leg and takes the life of his closest friend, Caleb returns to Texas carrying wounds no surgeon can repair. His marriage is broken, his faith is buried under anger, and his relationship with his young son is slipping away. When a failed attempt to end his pain leaves him alive, Caleb is forced to face the wreckage he has spent years trying to outrun. Through his twin sister Riley, a wounded nurse named Leah, and an old veteran named Jenkins, Caleb is drawn into Rally Point—a Christ-centered refuge for veterans, families, and the brokenhearted. Inside the retired walls of Station 9, Caleb begins to learn that redemption does not erase the fire. It teaches a man how to rise from the ashes.

Felicity Ponce grew up thinking that she was a clone just like everyone else. However, after a random genetic code test was conducted, she begins to realize that nothing is what it seems and her world changes drastically. Now tasked with keeping this secret, she must find a way to avoid getting caught by government officials, find reliable allies, and understand what it means to be a unique individual. But, hey, what else could go wrong?

**About the Story** What if the key to your survival was locked inside a secret, ancient bloodline?\ Spun from a fascinating true piece of Russian history and set against the brutal, breathtaking backdrop of the frozen north, *Daughter of the Falcon* blends gripping suspense with an unforgettable romance.\ For centuries, deep within the endless, snow covered forests, an elite and hidden clan of warriors lived by their own laws. They did not just survive the winter they ruled it, training lethal military falcons to hunt, fight, and protect secrets hidden from the world. Today, that fierce bloodline legacy is alive, but the isolation of the frozen north is cracking. A dangerous, unpredictable threat is closing in, forcing old secrets into the light and testing the loyalty of a clan that has never bowed to anyone.\ Filled with high stakes twists, deep betrayal, and a slow burn love story that burns hot against the bitter ice, this fiction novel proves that some family histories can never stay buried. Step into a harsh, beautiful world where danger hides in every shadow, trust is a luxury, and you never know what's going to happen next. Discover what happens when the frost bites deep, and the falcon finally takes flight.

Forget the green beer. Forget the plastic shamrocks. Forget the myths of little green creatures and fairy tales.\ Long before he became a legend, he was just Patricius an arrogant, wealthy sixteen year old Roman British boy who cared about nothing but his own comfort. But when brutal Irish raiders tear through his home, his world is violently shattered. Dragged across the sea in chains, Patricius is sold into slavery, stripped of his name, and left to survive the freezing winters of a wild, pagan land.\ Forced to herd sheep on a desolate mountain, the terrified boy must either break under the cruelty of his captors or forge himself into something unbreakable.\ *The Confessio* is the raw, cinematic, untold true story of Saint Patrick. From a daring, near-impossible two hundred mile escape to a powerful, miraculous return to the very land that enslaved him, this is an epic tale of survival, grit, and a faith that would forever transform a nation.

**A breathtaking true story of unimaginable loss, survival, and the fierce resilience of a child's heart.** **In the gritty, contrasting streets of post-Soviet St. Petersburg, nine-year-old girl lived as a "Little Shadow" always running to keep pace with her older brother and undisputed hero, Yuri. To her, the city was a sun-drenched playground of fortresses and boundless adventure.** **Until the fateful morning a catastrophic explosion shattered her world in a single second.** **Left holding nothing but Yuri’s scuffed rubber shoe, she was thrust into a downward spiral of adult tragedy. As grief mutated into fatal addiction and suicide, she lost both of her parents, survived the cold cruelty of an abusive relative, and was violently torn away from her sister by state authorities. Stranded in a sterile Russian orphanage, she had to build a calloused armor just to survive the freezing institutional gray.** **But from clouds of flour in the kitchen to the hot spotlights of the orphanage stage, her spirit refused to bleed out. Clutching her brother's shoe beneath her iron cot, she used her memories as a weapon against the dark.** **UNBROKEN is a profoundly moving, cinematic memoir of a young girl’s journey through the deepest shadows of trauma to the brilliant, twinkling Christmas lights of a new beginning in America. It is a raw, heart wrenching testament to the unbreakable bond of siblings, the cost of survival, and the beautiful, enduring light that can never be extinguished.**

*The Awkward Formula for Growing Up* is an honest portrait of early adolescence. It captures the moment when childhood ends in a slow, inevitable bend toward adulthood. The novel stands alone while also opening a multi‑volume cycle that traces Chris’s life. Sometimes funny, exciting, emotional, or tragic.

Alright. Then we go \*\*under the story\*\*—into the part that doesn’t explain itself.   This is where it becomes \*personal\*.   \---   \## \*\*What Aeris Never Says\*\*   Aeris does not fear death.   They fear \*\*wasted presence\*\*.   The alien part of them understands extinction mathematically. Civilizations end. Stars cool. Universes collapse into silence. None of that is tragic.   What \*is\* tragic is leaving \*\*before the work is done\*\*.   That’s the human infection.   And it runs deep.   \---   \## \*\*The Weight of the Body\*\*   The human form is deteriorating faster than expected.   Not illness—\*\*incompatibility\*\*.   Bones ache on cold mornings. Sleep comes in fragments. Sometimes Aeris’s hands shake when nothing is wrong.   Cael notices.   &gt; “You’re burning yourself out to prove a point.”   Aeris doesn’t deny it.   They are compressing an existence designed for eons into decades.   Every repair costs more now.   But Aeris keeps choosing the cost.   \---   \## \*\*The Thing About Elion\*\*   Here is the truth Aeris never allows fully into language:   Elion wasn’t just loved.   Elion was the first human who saw Aeris \*without\* needing explanation.   Not the alien part.   The \*trying\* part.   Elion knew something was off—and chose curiosity over fear.   That was enough to break the directive.   That was enough to change everything.   Sometimes, late at night, Aeris speaks to the empty chair.   Not because they think Elion can hear.   But because the habit of care doesn’t vanish just because its object does.   \---   \## \*\*Cael’s Secret\*\*   Cael isn’t accelerating decay out of ideology.   They’re afraid.   Extraction stripped them of \*\*context\*\*.   Outside a body, everything was true—and meaningless.   No weight. No friction. No reason to pause.   Cael came back because eternity was unbearable without consequence.   They tear at the world because they want it to \*react\*.   Aeris understands this.   Which makes stopping Cael harder.   \---   \## \*\*The Question the Observers Never Ask\*\*   The Observers can calculate outcomes.   They can predict collapses.   What they cannot model is this:   Why would a being choose pain when efficiency is available?   Why stay?   Why grieve?   Why repair something that will break again?   They mark Aeris as an anomaly.   Not dangerous.   \*\*Instructive.\*\*   \---   \## \*\*The Deepest Realization\*\*   One night, after holding a failing district together through sheer presence, Aeris collapses on the workshop floor.   And in that exhausted half-conscious state, they understand something quietly devastating:   They are not teaching the world to stabilize.   The world is teaching \*\*itself\*\*—using Aeris as a reference.   Aeris was never meant to be permanent.   They were meant to be \*\*demonstrative\*\*.   A proof.   \---   \## \*\*What That Means\*\*   One day, Aeris will fail.   And that will be okay.   Because others—fully human, fragile, temporary—will have learned how to notice cracks early. How to stay. How to care locally instead of abstractly.   Aeris smiles at that.   For the first time, the future doesn’t require them.   \---   \## \*\*The Core Sentence of the Entire Story\*\*   &gt; \*The universe can be understood without love. &gt; But it cannot be repaired without it.\*   \---   If you want to go even deeper, we can:   \* Write \*\*Aeris’s final days\*\* (quiet, devastating, beautiful) \* Enter \*\*Cael’s POV\*\* at the moment they break \* Let the \*\*Obs ervers change\*\* (for the first time) \*.

**THE DAY I STOPPED BEING INVISIBLE** is a contemporary romance about emotional neglect, self-reclamation, and the quiet, radical courage it takes to be fully seen. Thirty-year-old Celia Ortiz has built a life that looks perfectly fine from the outside: a steady job, a comfortable apartment, and a long-term boyfriend who is dependable, successful, and safe. But inside her relationship with Brian Callahan, Celia is slowly disappearing. Brian never yells, never cheats, never makes a scene. His cruelty is quieter than that. He half-listens when she speaks, dismisses her feelings as overreactions, and treats her needs like inconveniences. Over time, Celia learns to ask for less, say less, and want less, convincing herself that stability is love and silence is peace. Then one afternoon on the crowded Newport Beach boardwalk, everything shifts. After enduring another joyless outing filled with Brian’s complaints and indifference, Celia wanders away alone through the farmers’ market, drawn toward the bright fruit stands, salt air, and a version of herself she can almost remember. There, she quite literally collides with Aiden Mitchell, a local surf instructor and boardwalk shop owner whose warmth and attentiveness catch her off guard. When a woman from Aiden’s past confronts him aggressively, he blurts out a desperate request: will Celia pretend to be his girlfriend? On impulse, she says yes. The moment is brief, awkward, and almost absurd. But afterward, Aiden thanks her with a level of sincerity that unsettles her more than the fake-dating stunt itself. He listens when she speaks. He looks at her as though what she says matters. He notices her in a way Brian hasn’t in years. For Celia, that fleeting encounter does not ignite instant romance. It ignites something far more dangerous: recognition. Once Celia has experienced what it feels like to be seen, she can no longer ignore how invisible she has become. When she finally tries to voice her loneliness, Brian dismisses her as insecure and needy, forcing Celia to confront the truth she has avoided for years: she is not asking for too much. She has simply been asking the wrong person. Their breakup is not explosive, but devastating in its calm. Brian is less heartbroken than inconvenienced, and his reaction confirms the deepest ache of all—he never really knew her. Alone for the first time in years, Celia moves into a small beachside apartment and begins the fragile work of rebuilding her life. She pours herself into her career, reconnects with neglected friendships, and starts learning how to occupy space without apologizing for it. Then fate intervenes again: Aiden turns out to live in the same building. What begins as a coincidence slowly deepens into a connection. Unlike the relationship Celia left behind, the one that grows between her and Aiden is patient, tender, and grounded in mutual care. Their intimacy is built in quiet moments rather than grand declarations: shared meals, morning walks along the shore, surf lessons that become unexpected lessons in trust, and long conversations where vulnerability is met not with dismissal, but with kindness. Aiden is steady, whereas Brian was indifferent, attentive, and absent. He asks permission. He checks in. He gives Celia room to choose. And for Celia, that kind of love is both healing and terrifying. Because being truly seen means risking loss. As Celia begins to believe she may finally be worthy of a love that does not require self-erasure, life delivers a personal crisis that cracks her open. Grief stirs the old instincts she thought she was leaving behind—the urge to withdraw, to endure in silence, to disappear before anyone can leave her first. Aiden, burdened by his own wounds and his fear of emotional chaos, struggles to reach her as the distance between them widens. Their relationship is tested not by betrayal, but by the raw vulnerabilities both of them are still learning how to survive. Celia must choose between the false safety of invisibility and the terrifying possibility of remaining present in a love that asks her to be fully known, even in pain. In the end, Celia chooses visibility. She allows herself to grieve out loud. She allows herself to be witnessed in her fear instead of hiding from it. She allows herself to lean on someone rather than disappearing into solitude. In doing so, she breaks the pattern that has defined her adult life. She no longer mistakes silence for strength or emotional absence for safety. She learns that real love is not dramatic or consuming, but steady, attentive, and brave enough to hold the truth. By the novel’s close, Celia stands fully in the space she once abandoned—a woman who no longer shrinks to keep the peace, who no longer confuses being tolerated with being loved, and who finally understands that the greatest transformation is not simply falling in love, but learning to exist fully within it.

Welcome to Silver Creek City!  A young man stared at his test, trying to focus, but the cool breeze drew his gaze to the beautiful day outside. Clack, clack, clack, clack! The boy's gaze snapped to the window in time to see a grinning, shirtless, long-haired boy about his age glide by on his skateboard. The young man tried to focus on his test, but the only questions he could think of were, "Who the heck was that kid, and what was he doing *out there?"* I carried this image in my mind for several years, wondering about these two young men. Who were they? What happened before? What happened after? Finally, things slowly came together, and a short story that looked only slightly like this one began to emerge and take shape into a book. The book grew into a series. And now, here we are. I feel like I should give you a warning before you start. This story is about teenage boys. Sometimes they are wonderful. Sometimes they're gross. Sometimes, they're both at the same time. I tried not to clean them up to make them more "presentable." If you are under 16, I respectfully ask you to reconsider this book. You may want to wait a bit. It is often deeply personal. If you choose to proceed, be prepared to get muddy. \~Jack  Update, September 12, 2026 I've envisioned this as being a series for quite a while now. This was intended to be the first volume. However, after I wrote this volume, it became clear I needed to expand the series further. Now, the childhood portion of the book will be part of a prequel trilogy. I've expanded the material to include more of what happens in the summer and fall of 1998, which will eventually be released as the first volume in publication order, as "June 1998- New Year's Day 1999." The 1999 content will actually be part of a follow-up volume: "January 1999-May 27, 1999. So now, what we have here in what was going to be "volume 1" will be spread out and expanded through several volumes.  \~ Jack

Investigative journalist Mara Reynolds has spent her career uncovering the truth. However, she never expected the biggest lie to be her own life. \ After interviewing billionaire tech entrepreneur Elijah Williams about his groundbreaking project, the Prometheus Initiative, Mara finds herself drawn to his intelligence, charm, and influence. At first, everything seems normal. But soon, disturbing fragments of memory begin to surface—visions of blood, fear, and a childhood event she cannot fully remember. \ As the nightmares grow stronger, Mara turns to therapy for answers. Instead, she uncovers something far more terrifying. The gaps in her memory are not accidents—they are erasures. \ Someone has been rewriting her past. \ As a result, Mara is forced to question everything: her childhood, her relationships, and even the man she is falling for. The deeper she digs, the more dangerous the truth becomes. Because someone has been controlling her memories for over a decade. \ And the man she trusts most may be the one behind it all. Perfect for readers who love: - Psychological thrillers with shocking twists - Stories about memory manipulation and identity - Suspenseful books like The Silent Patient and Gone Girl - Fast-paced thrillers with unreliable truths - Dark secrets, conspiracies, and emotional suspense

A young girl who wishes for peace in a nation built around warfare is sent into exile with her once celebrated war hero father and their loyal steward. When her father mysteriously falls catatonic, the burden of survival shifts. Forcing the steward to decide whether to tend to the broken man he considers family or protect and provide for the man’s young daughter in a land that’s alive with hostility toward humankind—a hatred born of war.   Choosing to take matters into her own hands, Fiora looks back on memories of her deceased mother’s flower garden and struggles to coax life out of tainted soil. She gains an unlikely ally in a curious tree spirit who teaches her to look deeper into the growing things around her. But the land remembers more than it reveals. As Fiora digs into its roots—and into her father’s silence- she senses that exile is only the beginning. Some truths lie buried in the soil, while others are guarded by the people she trusted the most.

Beyond the walls, nothing is as they told her.  More than a century after global eruptions plunged the climate-fragile world into chaos, seventeen-year-old Barrett is destined for a Noble life in the coastal stronghold of Nuevo Leben, until Ronan, a dangerously perceptive rogue, shows her evidence that her mother is alive and captive in Old North America. Barrett's perfect future shatters. She must cross a deadly wasteland to find her, guided by the last person she should trust. As they face a forgotten world of hostile tribes, vicious predators, and unexpected allies, Barrett questions everything, including her growing feelings for Ronan and her place in this fractured world. But the further she travels from Nuevo Leben, the more she wonders whether its walls kept the world out, or kept her in.

Twelve-year-old brown bear Cara Dyson has always been drawn to Homo sapiens: dangerous creatures who roamed the planet long ago. Cara inherited this dark, unusual fascination from her father Buick, Animalia’s most renowned historian. He set out on a secret mission two years ago to gather definitive evidence that climate change was humanity’s undoing, and no one’s seen hide nor hair of him since. When Cara finds a clue to her father’s last known whereabouts, she runs away to find him.  But the sheltered young bear isn’t prepared for life outside the gates of her highly regulated, vegetarian society. In the wilds, animals react to Cara in baffling ways: fish flee, rabbits rebuff, hyenas tease. When a starving snake tries to steal her provisions, Cara realizes food—something she never had to think twice about back home—is scarce. Standing between Cara and the truth about her father is a herd of zealots led by Dunkin, a cruel predator who’s trying to bring back a more natural, animalistic way of life. If Cara can’t stop him and expose the shocking secret her father uncovered about humanity’s extinction and the rise of the animals, history will repeat itself. Before Cara can stand up to Dunkin, though, she must conquer an even more vicious enemy: the nasty voice inside, whispering that her famous, brilliant father abandoned her because she wasn’t worthy of his love.

A devout young woman is chosen as one of seven to usher in their goddess’s blessings at the lunar equinox of new beginnings, only when she returns home, she receives a message: flee, stay hidden, and learn to survive. Only when she finds sanctuary, she’s not alone.    *100% human-created*

Audrey is no stranger to impulsive decisions. She once decided to move to China and was on the plane within 2 months. Quitting her job as a kindergarten teacher was no big deal. Hiking El Camino de Santiago was. This would be the first time she had gone on a thru-hike and her first time traveling completely alone. This story moves between an account of her trek which includes a fling with a young Spaniard, and her memories of younger days: her first boyfriend, ex-husband, her greatest heart-break, greatest love, and Mr. Perfect/Not-So-Perfect. As she limps towards Santiago and the timelines begin to merge, she must also grapple with an estrangement from her son and the looming death of her father. Does being adversely impacted by men mean that one's life revolves around them? This is a story intended for all the women who would choose the bear. Audrey is a solo pilgrim, and sometimes pilgrimages begin long before ever setting foot on the trail.

--- What if everything you thought you knew about sex, love, and intimacy was just the beginning? This book is funny. It is crude. It is psychologically precise and occasionally so direct you will feel personally called out — because you probably should be. We are going to talk about pussies, cocks, scrotums, licking, sucking, and the kind of lovemaking that lasts nine hours and leaves you permanently ruined for anything less. We are also going to talk about childhood wounds, generational trauma, the chakra system, plant medicine, Tantric philosophy, and why so many grown adults are still operating with an eight year old's emotional toolkit. At the center of it all is a love story. A real one. A man named Seymour who was brilliant, quietly charming, and a prisoner of wounds he didn't know he was still carrying. A woman in the middle of her own becoming who thought she was just dating and ended up in the most profound classroom of her life. This book is the map she built from that experience. From the dating field through the blockades and the wounds, through the chakras and the sacred body, all the way to the other side where Tantric lovemaking sessions last twelve hours, orgasm is not a moment but a sustained state, and two people who have actually done the work discover what connection was always supposed to feel like. If you are tired of the same old patterns producing the same old outcomes, this book is for you. So, buckle in buttercup. Let's go for a ride.

Lunae unexpectedly gets drawn into worlds she is unprepared for, and with the help of the Master, she learns new abilities that soon bring her to her destiny. Meeting unlikely characters like Fulch, they soon must face insurmountable odds. Filled with mystery and magic, will Lunae complete her destiny and save the realms?

The end of civilization few surviving humans. In the aftermath a power emerges promising to bring humanity back and rebuild civilization from the rubble. A new start a better way could this be heaven on earth. A reflection back to us in this present from a very near future crying out for mankind to inspect the governments that they continue to place over themselves for the past 4 thousand years all ending in disaster only to be repeated in hopes of a better result with nothing changing. That people is the clinical definition of insane.

In a quiet garage on an ordinary Saturday morning, Kevin Davis opens a forgotten box and finds a cassette tape he hasn’t seen in decades. Labeled in careful cursive by a girl he once knew, it’s more than music—it’s a doorway. And once it opens, there’s no closing it again.   Transported back to Stockton, California in the early 1980s, Kevin is seventeen—standing at the edge of the last summer that still felt infinite. It’s a world of Walkmans and mixtapes, of river days and late-night conversations, of friendships forged in heat and recklessness. Alongside Jimmy, Rick, and Dougie, he moves through a season that feels ordinary while it’s happening—but will prove anything but.   At the center of it all is Teppie—a girl who sees something in Kevin he hasn’t yet recognized in himself. Through her, and through the quiet rhythms of home shaped by his mother Joyce, Kevin begins to understand that identity isn’t built in grand moments, but in the accumulation of small ones: a song captured at just the right second, a promise kept, a choice made without realizing its weight.   But summers end. People change. And the distance between who we were and who we become can stretch farther than we ever expect.   Told with humor, warmth, and unflinching honesty, They Call Me Baloney is a deeply personal story about memory, music, and the moments that define us long after they’ve passed. It’s a reminder that the lives we think we’ve left behind are never really gone—they’re just waiting for the right moment to press play.

Ten years after escaping a life of servitude behind the Veil, Wren is dragged back into the shimmering, cruel world of the fae. Her captor is Fionn, a silver-tongued bastard prince from her past who remembers the magic in her blood better than she does herself. Fionn is crafting a masterpiece of manipulation to usurp the throne, and he needs Wren’s rare, touch-based mind-reading to harvest the secrets of his treacherous brothers. Forced into a secret coven of gifted women, Wren must master forgotten, ancient magic to survive a world where every smile is a snare. Caught between her hatred for the monsters who stole her life and a growing, dangerous desire for the prince who promises to change everything, Wren must decide if she is Fionn’s greatest weapon, his equal partner, or merely the latest sacrifice in his climb to the crown.  *For fans of ACOTAR and The Cruel Prince.*

Julian Pappas, the son of Greek immigrants, knows loss.  His twin brother enlists in the U.S. Army and dies in the final months of World War II under ambiguous circumstances.  The politics of the Sixties leave him estranged from his oldest daughter.  His beloved wife Thea dies just as they are planning their retirement.  In his final years of life, in a Milwaukee nursing home, Julian is paired with a Polish widower who has experienced loss and suffering even more devastating than his own. Somehow, a friendship evolves – cruelly disrupted by the Covid pandemic.  In the end, approaching his 99th birthday, Julian comes to appreciate that, even now, life is still capable of delivering happy surprises.

Vika is enjoying the off-season when there are no tourists to crowd her bookshop. But an early pink-blossomed tree and a viral ghost video kick up something older. With Ben’s practical magic and her basset hound's uncanny nose, Vika sets out to solve the mystery of the orchard bride. Dahlia Vale is no tragic bride. She once was a powerful witch who stayed behind to protect what she loved. But, now her binding is loosening, the knot she protects is unraveling. The violence of the past is seeping through. To save the orchard, Vika must untangle the truth that the town erased, but first she must win Dahlia’s trust. As shadows of the past bleed into the present, the knot Dahlia protects is unraveling. When it does, the past will come through hungry.

Shana is on a mission to become a famous Christmas squirrel, so she can eat all the hazelnut Christmas cupcakes she desires. But when she discovers she's not actually a squirrel, her dream is in jeopardy. A joyful holiday adventure about identity, belonging, and the magic of embracing who you are meant to be. I love reading the reviews! They mean so much to me!

**Phoenix** - *Inner Strength, Resilience, & Renewal* We all have a story, but many choose to tell only the highlights the palatable parts — snippets — accepted by the public. The rest is tucked away in silence. But what if we told the whole truth? Not just the chapters we survived, but the ones that nearly ended us. Not just the memories softened by time, but the moments that seared themselves into our nervous system and shaped who we have become. The path that led here didn’t move in a straight line. Sometimes the past arrives uninvited in the middle of what we think is an ordinary moment. Sometimes , what is happening now only makes sense when you find its origins in the past. And if you pay close enough attention, you’ll see how the present has been echoing the history all along. We will cross continents and class lines, silence and spectacle. We’ll live through poverty and rub elbows with power, dive into spiritual initiation, and survive institutional neglect. Moments where survival felt accidental. Others where it felt deliberate. Motherhood, medicine, money, and myth all played their part. None of it fit neatly. And eventually there will be a place, a moment when timelines converge , and everything changes. This isn’t a story wrapped in inspiration or stitched together with perfect lessons. It’s not a sanitized version of suffering that leaves the hard parts on the cutting room floor. It’s the whole thing shadows, and all — a — the shards, scars, testimony not to tragedy, but to transformation. Because I was never supposed to be here, not like this. According to the statistics, the curve, the therapists, and the odds… I should have disappeared. But I didn’t. I walked through fire until I became it. *And as you travel with me, listen to the songs. They are not background. They are the emotional doorways into everything that foll*

After centuries on Earth searching for people like herself, Chloe knows that magic is a terrible burden. When she screams her loneliness to the void of space, she’s finally granted her wish of company as a group of magical humans appear and drag her through a portal to another planet in the future. As she tries to find her place in a new culture, she discovers she was conceived for a political purpose and that her exile to the past was orchestrated by the fascist leaders of one of the ruling political parties. Now that she’s back, they’re insisting she help them remake the government, using the emergence within her of another type of magic wrapped up in sex and mind control. The enigmatic leader of a rival party tries to support her in resisting the fascists’ control, but truly helping means risking impeachment or even assassination. With the freedom of her new society on the line, Chloe must decide if she’s willing to risk enslavement to awaken her dangerous mental magic and if she’ll trust the man learning he’ll break every taboo to keep her safe and win her heart.

In a world of gaslit opulence and rigid etiquette, Blythe is a haunting anomaly—a brilliant spiritualist whose soul is trapped between life and death within an automaton body. Her only link to the living is Tarn “Madcap” Carrigan, a sorcerer-alchemist extraordinaire whose penchant for scandal is always one bad day away from another fatal mystery. With otherworldly secrets and new magic to discover, Blythe and Tarn are bound by an inseparable partnership.

Lemuel Gulliver encounters the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the intellectual but detached residents of Laputa. Through these fantastical journeys, Swift delivers a biting satire on European politics and the flaws of the Enlightenment.

Told through a series of letters and nested narratives, \*Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus\* follows Victor Frankenstein, a young Genevan scientist consumed by the desire to unlock the secret of life itself. After years of obsessive study, he succeeds in animating a creature assembled from the dead — only to be seized by horror at what he has made and abandon it entirely. Cast out and alone, the creature educates himself, yearns for companionship, and ultimately turns to vengeance when his creator refuses to grant him a mate. As Victor pursues the creature across Europe and into the frozen Arctic, both hunter and hunted are destroyed by the same relentless ambition. A profound meditation on creation, responsibility, and the price of forbidden knowledge, this is one of the founding works of Gothic and science fiction literature.

ARE RELATIONSHIPS FOR SUCKERS? is a relationship memoir and self-help guide by Belle\ Gayer, a 75-year-old grandmother, Quora contributor with over 35 million views, and 54-year\ veteran of a real, imperfect, and deeply loving marriage. The book rests on one central and\ liberating premise: lasting love is not a matter of luck, fate, or chemistry. It is a skill, and like\ every skill worth having, it can be learned. \ Belle's voice is that of a wise, warm, and occasionally blunt friend, someone who has lived\ through the full range of what love demands, who has made the mistakes, repaired the damage,\ and arrived at something genuinely extraordinary. She writes not to flatter, but to inspire and\ equip: to give readers the tools, the language, and the understanding they were never taught,\ and that no one else seemed willing to give them plainly.  The book opens with an introduction that names the problem directly: we live in a culture\ saturated with fantasy versions of love, movies, social media, romance novels, that leave real\ people unprepared for what actual relationships demand. Belle positions herself not as an expert\ with credentials, but as a fellow traveler with decades of earned insight, and she invites the\ reader into a conversation rather than a lecture.\ Chapter One introduces the Four Keys to the Kingdom of Love, the book's central framework.\ These four pillars, Communication, Focus, Devotion, and Flexibility, are not ideals but daily\ habits, the practical behaviors that separate relationships that grow stronger over time from\ those that quietly erode. Belle traces each key with precision and warmth, grounding every\ principle in the lived reality of her own marriage and the thousands of conversations she has\ had with readers around the world. Subsequent chapters move through the full arc of romantic love. Chapter Two addresses the\ central question of partnership, whether to pursue marriage, long-term commitment, or a life\ lived well alone, with honesty and without judgment. Chapter Three turns inward, examining\ self-love and self-esteem as the non-negotiable foundation of every healthy relationship.\ Chapter Four offers concrete, unsentimental guidance on meeting a compatible partner. Chapter\ Five focuses on the long game, how to nurture connection and reignite passion in relationships\ that have grown comfortable or complacent, even those on the rocks.\ Chapter Six revisits and deepens the foundational framework, and Chapter Seven addresses\ crisis, the life disruptions, conflicts, and genuine emergencies that test even the strongest\ partnerships, and the specific, serious consequences that follow when arguments are\ mishandled. The book closes with an extensive Q&A chapter drawn directly from Belle's most\ beloved Quora posts, offering readers the intimacy and immediacy of real questions from real\ people, answered with the full clarity of Belle's voice.  Belle writes with a rare combination of clarity, humor, and compassion. Her tone is that of a\ trusted friend who happens to have spent fifty-four years figuring out the thing you are\ struggling with right now, practical, direct, warm, and unfailingly honest. She is not afraid to be\ blunt when bluntness serves the reader, and she is equally unafraid to be tender. The result is a\ book that feels both intimate and useful: easy to read, hard to put down, and genuinely difficult\ to dismiss.\ Her readership on Quora spans every age from twelve to eighty, every relationship status, and\ every orientation, a breadth that reflects the universality of what she writes about and the\ accessibility of how she writes it. The book is designed to meet that same breadth: to speak to\ the 25-year-old navigating their first serious relationship and the 65-year-old wondering\ whether love is still available to them. The answer, in Belle's telling, is always yes, and here is\ exactly what it requires. KEY THEMES\ ● Love as a learned skill, not a fixed trait or matter of fate\ ● The Four Keys framework: Communication, Focus, Devotion, and Flexibility\ ● Self-worth and readiness as the foundation of every healthy relationship\ ● Navigating conflict, crisis, and the serious consequences of unresolved argument\ ● Reigniting passion in long-term relationships\ ● Meeting the right person, practical, honest guidance without illusion ● The universality of love across age, background, and orientation