Perhaps it was divine providence and not chance that Beaufort, South Carolina, was to witness the onset of the Civil War-occupation of the Union Army, and unlike its southern counterparts, spared the kindle torches of Sherman's determination to destroy the Confederacy. As a result, it preserved its natural beauty of live oak trees, picturesque homes, and cultural beliefs and customs generic to the Sea Islands. The plantation lifestyle was serene,...

IN THE SHADOW OF 10,000 HILLS follows the intertwining stories of three women from vastly diverse cultures searching for personal peace in post-genocide Rwanda. Lillian Carlson, an African-American civil rights activist now in her early 50s, traveled to Africa from Atlanta in 1970 to grieve the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She dreamed of bettering the world, one child at a time, with an orphanage in Rwanda's rift valley. Two decades later,...

This fictional story is loosely based on true events that have taken place beginning in the 1950's in Iran and continuing up until the present in the United States. Some of these events happened in the author's life, and the rest are what he is aware of. The story is delivered in the first person, however, and fictional elements and characters have been incorporated, in order to better convey the author's intended message in a smooth storyline. The...

Neighbors welcome a family of Syrian refugees to the small town of Grand Forks. Elderly Uncle Ahmad, still recovering from the trauma of civil war, rewards the kindness of his new friends with his prodigious wood sculpting talent. When a Black church displays his soul-stirring art in a fundraising event to support refugees, Ahmad's skill becomes widely admired in the community. It also incites suspicion and islamophobia among local white nationalists....

Returning home in the wake of his brother's death, a successful man must grapple with his coal-town roots. For four generations, Colonel Tom Owen's family has been defined by the coal business. Having pulled himself out of the mines and through college, Tom is now a celebrated army surgeon who served in Europe under General Patton. But when his younger brother dies in a mine accident, he returns to their hometown of Coalville, Pennsylvania, where...

Of places like Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Inca and Mayan Temples, Nazca lines, it's the Hawaiian Heiau, which yields the most knowledge from their study. The Archaeoastronomy found on O'Ahu is spectacular. "To describe the beauty in the symmetry of O'Ahu's Heiau Template and how the site experts, the Kahuna Kuhi Kuhi Puuone, who designed the system is like trying to describe the Big Chip in the celestial heavens. The one God used in His computer to...

It was the perfect marriage… until they fell in love. Chaya is a young woman torn between her duty to family and her life in the UK. While her traditional Sri Lankan parents want her to settle down into marriage, what they don't know is that Chaya has turned away the one true love of her life, Noah, terrified of their disapproval. Gimhana is hiding his sexuality from his family. It's easy enough to pretend he's straight when he lives half a world...

From the pen of Gilbert Parker comes one of the most popular Canadian novels of the late nineteenth century. First published simultaneously in Canada and the United States in 1896, The Seats of the Mighty is set in Quebec City in 1759, against the backdrop of the conflict between the English and the French over the future of New France. Written and published after Parker's move to England, the novel attempts to romanticize French Canada without alienating...

Bari King, a Niger-Delta militant leader, after indulging in wanton killing, kidnapping, blackmailing, and crude oil theft is now at wits-end, as his sister falls in love with his French captive. Reluctantly letting-go of the hero-worship and ego-massage, he embraces the Amnesty Program of the Federal Government of Nigeria. However, peace still eludes him, and his world becomes mired in upheaval, as the covenant of protection he made with some dark...

Shortly after his mother's death in the early 1970s, Ricardo Deveaux, leaves college and walks off his job. Without knowing why or what lies in store for him, he packs a few clothes in a backpack and hitchhikes across two thirds of the country to the only destination he can think of... New Mexico and his maternal grandmother. Whom he hasn't seen in twelve years. Things don't always go smoothly in an isolated mountain village for a young man raised...