For Beau: The Sarah Ashdown Story by Simon Gandossi

For Beau: The Sarah Ashdown Story 

by Simon Gandossi

Genre: Historical Fiction 

Release Date: December 15th 2016

The ground shook with each bomb that fell on London. The night sky lit up, and the sounds of gunfire overwhelmed the city as our brave men fought back. It took so many bombs to fall on this great city to make the Germans realize that England could not be defeated. It took just one bomb to make one woman realize her true destiny. 

Sarah Ashdown's insurmountable guilt and remorse over the death of a young girl sets in motion one of the most unbelievable stories of World War II. An ordinary housewife who defied the odds to become one of the most wanted women in occupied Europe, her story of determination and courage will shock and inspire those who read it.

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Simon Gandossi is a historical fiction author who was born and raised in Western Australia. From an early age, Simon discovered a passion for history and writing. Itis that passion combined with his desire to bring to light the different aspects of the past that makes him a unique writer. There are a lot of people who give upso much to follow their dreams, and Simon isno different. To become a professional writer is difficult, but his hard work and determination has seen him develop from an amateur to a full-time writer in just a few years. To learn more about Simon, please visit www.simongandossi.com. 

"I want everyone to take a step back in time when they read my books. Every book should take the reader on a journey. With my dedication to preserving history, I know that each and every person will begin that journey from the very first word" - Simon Gandossi

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The Tree of Life by Dawn Davis

Title: The Tree of Life 

Author: Dawn Davis 

Publisher: Friesen Press 

Pages: 304 

Genre: Historical Fiction

Two accidental time travelers explore Canada in 1939 in THE TREE OF LIFE, the first installment in the Tower Room series by Dawn Davis.

As THE TREE OF LIFE opens, Charlotte Hansen and her friend, Henry Jacobs, are hanging out in the old mansion where Charlotte and Leo, her grandfather, live. Henry is there to practice the piano, and Charlotte is waiting for him to finish so that she can supervise his work on a massive school project researching the 1930s. When Leo leaves the house to pick up his friend Gwendolyn Fenton—whom Charlotte does not like—the two eleven-year-olds prepare tea and cookies for the grown-ups’ visit and then rush to the Tower Room. The room is located on the top floor of the mansion. Charlotte is not allowed in the room without permission; but she is headstrong and ignores the directive. After leaving the tray of tea and sweets on the tabletop, Charlotte pulls Henry underneath the table with her.

The children soon hear Gwendolyn telling Leo about a magical brooch from her childhood. Suddenly, a large hand grabs Charlotte, who clutches Henry tightly before the hand thrusts the pair into nothingness. After Charlotte regains consciousness, she and Henry meet the younger version of Gwendolyn, a spoiled force of nature determined to appropriate the brooch her late mother left her brother. The friends learn that they are still in Rose Park, the neighborhood they both call home, but the year is 1939.

As Charlotte and Henry realize that they have traveled backward to move forward, the purpose of their time travel is revealed: Charlotte is there to help Gwendolyn resolve the pain of her past. During the adventure, Henry advocates against the anti-Semitism and racism of that time, and Charlotte learns to look beyond her own desires to help a person in need.

The idea for THE TREE OF LIFE and the Tower Room series came to the author after she attended a centennial celebration at her daughters’ school. “What might happen,” Davis thought, “if two children lived their research instead of simply reading about it? This one step outside the restrictions of time became the foundation for the series.”

As in THE TREE OF LIFE, the next three books will highlight different time periods in Canadian history, with the one constant being the appearance of Charlotte and Henry. Although the children will appear in each book with different names and bodies, they will be easily recognizable as eternal soul mates, and the harbingers of love and connection for those who have stumbled and lost their way.

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They needed to work on our outfits for school on Monday.

There was to be a parade in the playground, a decade fashion show parade. Since most of the parents refused to scour the bins at Good Will for appropriate clothing, Henry and Charlotte were the only ones so far who had volunteered. Technically Henry did not volunteer. Charlotte signed his name in invisible ink and was planning on informing him later this afternoon. She would tell Henry that he would get special marks for being in the parade (a lie) because Henry was motivated only by marks. Their grades were already as high as they could go, mostly for bringing in a lot of old junk from Charlotte’s great aunt Dilys’s decaying trunks; printed spun rayon dresses, white nubuck open-toed Cuban-heeled shoes, step-by-step instructions on how to pluck out all your eyebrow hair and draw on fake eyebrows that had a larger arch, one of the first ballpoint pens ever made (1938), a picture of a chesterfield suite in mohair that cost $1.95 at the Adams Trade-in Store Special, and a spring hat with a lilac ribbon purchased at Fairweathers for $2.00 and still in the bag. In reviewing her list, Charlotte found one item to be extremely interesting. In the 1930s, a hat cost more than a chesterfield.

It irked Charlotte that she needed to refer to her lists to remember how many items she had collected because Henry never needed this crutch. He could recite any list, any page of a book, any tiny print on a newspaper, even if he had only seen it once and for less than a second.

That’s because Henry had a condition called eidetic memory bog.

A bog is a swamp, a very damp place where unpleasant things grow and multiply. This was Charlotte’s way of describing the interior of Henry’s skull.

Eidetic memory: an article in a newspaper, a children’s story, musical notes from dingy old manuscripts, the script on a Chinese menu, junk mail forced through the mail slot, recipes, etc. etc. misc., all absorbed, imprinted, collated and filed away for future reference, word perfect. Although Henry denied it, Charlotte believed he had this disease because of his permanently crossed eyes. Therefore his brain was unable to process information the way the brain of a normal person (like Charlotte’s) did by sucking up facts through perfectly aligned eyeballs and expelling it all through the very same portals. Henry’s out-take portals were plugged by all the surgeries he had when he was a toddler, and Charlotte feared that someday Henry’s brain might explode from all the useless information he could not eliminate.

A handful of people knew he had this illness, and Henry utilized it sparingly.

“Because I appear to be blind, I overcompensate by having an unusual ability to retain data that may or may not be useful in the world at large,” Henry once told Charlotte. “Is that so unusual?” 

Of course she immediately had to set him a test.

Henry was lounging around on Charlotte’s bed, breathing her air and staring at her ceiling and moving his lips in a really annoying way so she said: “Let me show you something.”

He ignored her for a while but finally cranked his head over to where Charlotte was stitching together a hole in the leg of one of her stuffed animals.

“What?”

She dropped the dog and held the World Book up to his face.

“Look at this.” She pointed to the section on German wirehaired pointers. She let Henry look at the article for three seconds and then she whisked the book away and sat cross-legged on the end of her bed because Henry was taking up all the middle space.

“What about it?” he asked.

“What kind of dog is a German wirehaired pointer?” Charlotte asked.

“A hunting dog,” he replied immediately.

“How did it come to be?”

“It’s a cross-breed which means the dog was developed by breeding a German short haired pointer with a poodle pointer.”

“And how much does it weigh?”

“About twenty-five kilos.”

“Does it like having its ears scratched?”

Silence.

“How many times a day do you have to take it out for a walk?”

Silence.

“What do you do if the dog howls in the middle of the night?”

Angry silence.

“How long does it take the average German short haired pointer to devour a bowl of food, and what happens if one freshly cooked pea is buried in the midst of its food?”

Confused silence.

“What good does it do you to be able to memorize this anyway?”

Superior silence.

“Facts are meaningless,” she said. “Experience is everything.”

“Shut up,” Henry said. “There is only one fact that is significant. I blend in. I get along just fine.”

In fact, Henry did not get along just fine, and if it weren’t for Charlotte, he never would have survived at Rose Park Public School.

For some reason the mere presence of Henry on the playground at school annoyed a few of the boys in the grade five class, the ones who weren’t very bright—Tyler MacKenzie in particular. Tyler invented a few colourful names which he felt best described Henry’s exterior; cross-eyed creep, frogman, slimebucket, and monster boy were a few of the favourites. These insults usually bounced off Henry, drifting into the air like soap bubbles, which then quietly burst, leaving Henry unharmed. He didn’t seem to hear the words directed at him. But once Henry made the mistake of getting in Tyler’s way. He was standing at the southern end of the playground reading a book he had projected onto the wall of the school, the same brick wall Tyler and his friends were using to see who could slam a baseball the hardest.

Henry didn’t know he was in the way because he was not present to the reality of the moment.

He returned abruptly when Tyler stood before him, blocking his view of the wall.

“Hey, slimebucket, we’re playing a game here. Move.”

Henry didn’t.

“Or maybe we could use you as a target and just aim for your nose.” Tyler touched Henry’s nose lightly with his fingertips. “That would be easier to hit than the wall.”

Henry brushed aside the grubby fingertips and stared straight at Tyler.

“Smell,” he said, “is stored in the limbic area of the brain.” His voice was measured and precise. “That’s why whenever I smell dog shit, I think of you…”

“In fact, all our memories and emotions are stored in the limbic area,” Henry told Charlotte five minutes later as they were both hurried off to the nurse’s office. Charlotte got an elbow in her eye trying to defend Henry whose upper lip had been cut right open.

He continued to talk as blood pooled in his mouth.

“The emotional content we all have stockpiled is extremely personal,” he said matter-of-factly, shifting the ice pack from the staffroom freezer to spit in the yogurt jar from the daycare centre. “And everything we possess inside here,” he said, tapping his forehead with three fingers, “is warehoused instantly with no conscious intervention on our part at all.”

So much for blending in.

Dawn Davis is a writer living and working in Toronto, Canada. Before becoming a writer, Davis worked as a teacher after completing her education at York University and the University of Toronto.

The Tree of Life is Davis’s debut novel, and the first book in her Tower Room series.

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Cover Reveal: Silver Bells, Curses & Spells by K.M. Thompson and M.S. Murray

Silver Bells, Curses & Spells

by K.M Thompson, M.S. Murray

Publication Date: December 11, 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Holiday, Romance

Andrea Benezier is a clumsy witch who can’t seem to control her magic. Setting someones hair on fire and messing with the weather are everyday mishaps for her.

Eryx Castille is a pretentious billionaire who has come to claim what is his—the stores run by Andrea and her neighbors.

After the death of her parents on Christmas Eve three years ago, Andrea now hates the holidays and anything associated with it. When Andrea receives an unwanted gift, The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, she is sure Eryx is behind the book that keeps mysteriously appearing.

When Eryx questions her magic abilities it's the last straw in an already horrible week. In a fit of defiance she casts the Christmas Carol Curse and curses them both for seventy-two hours.

Will they survive this curse without killing each other? Things will get heated but will it be enough to melt the snow built up around their cold hearts? Or will they learn the true magic of the Christmas season?

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ABOUT K.M THOMPSON

I’m twenty-eight, a wife, a mother to three children and the author of the Daylight Series. Currently my writing career consists of four books, the Daylight trilogy and Hell Hath no Fury, which is a standalone novel based on a true events. All of them are self published and can be found on Amazon. When I was younger, I never dreamed of being an author—I think I wanted to be a pop star or actress these were pretty farfetched dreams, so I settled for being an accountant or marine biologist. My grades at school were abysmal and not worthy of a mention, I also never went on to higher education. I have absolutely no qualifications in creative writing or any similar subjects, but I have a very overactive imagination and I’m an avid reader of all genres of fiction.

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ABOUT M.S. MURRAY

I know the voices in my head aren’t real, but they’ve got some great ideas!!

Hey,

Voices here, I’m M.S. Murray the leader and spokeswomen for said voices. I’m their translator from brain to paper. I take all their ideas and turn them into books.

A bit about me.

I’m from the West of Scotland and have lived here all my life. I love it here.

I’m married to an amazing man who sometimes looks at me like I might need institutionalizing and sometimes thinks he’d love the room beside me.

I have two amazing children who I love more than life itself along with a hamster, a cat and a dog. All of which are mental too.

Don’t tell the dog or the hamster but the cat rules the house.

Writing is a dream for me. One I didn’t realise until later in life.

One day (not too long ago) I sat down and actually listened to the voices then started writing down their ideas. Since then I’ve not looked back.

If you like my books or if you’d like to see what other ideas the voices produce follow me on Facebook. I’m always happy to hear from you.

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Pre-Order Blitz: The Soul Whisperer by J.M. Harrison

Book Title:The Soul Whisperer: A Tale of Hidden Truths and Unspoken Possibilities 

Author: J.M. Harrison 

Genre: Fiction/Thriller/Mystery/Visionary 

Release Date: February 26, 2016 

Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions

Following personal tragedies and spiralling financial problems, Londoners Alex and Sara are desperate to find ways to rediscover their zest for life. A free holiday provides the perfect opportunity for a second chance, but not long after arriving in France they discover that all is not what it seems... A series of shocking revelations challenge their understanding of humanity, as they are propelled into a dangerous world governed by a ruthless occult society. Magical relics and extra-terrestrial objects promise to unlock incredible secrets, but what extremes will people go to in order to attain them? In a modern-day spiritual quest, Alex and Sara will be forced to take control of their destiny, facing their own demons along the way as time counts down, for them and the entire human race…

While Alex explored, Sara popped in and out of a cute little shop and bought a book on ‘Mary Magdelene’. In addition to the numerous signs of the shell, they found symbols or Yantras in the pavements. Alex stopped quite still and spoke ‘Yantras are mystical symbols used to focus the mind on spiritual concepts, an artistic wordless code which feeds the expansion of consciousness. The act of concentrating on a Yantra has transformational consequences.’ Alex’s imagination was on fire, like the light in his eyes. Why were these signs here? Strange but true, the two of them were walking through a village in Southern France, looking at the pebble Yantras they had found embedded in the cobbled pavements. Alex studied them, like a time travelling detective, as if he knew what he was looking at. ‘This one is a symbol about becoming a whole human being’ he commented on the circle made up of hundreds of individual pebbles ‘…and this one concerns the next dimension, the consciousness of the Soul.’ ‘How do you know that?’ enquired Sara…

Born in southern England in the mid 60's, by the early 1980's Jonathan's natural creativity was expressed through contemporary singing and song writing. In 1987 he underwent an interesting short stint as the lead singer of the popular band Frankie Goes To Hollywood following the departure of vocalist Holly Johnson. By the end of his music career in 1990 he was awarded a gold disc for his lead vocal on the Telstar compilation album "Get on This 2", which sold over 100,000 copies, going to number 2 in the UK album charts.

Following a profound mystical death experience in 2007, the spiritual realization which took place inspired him to write his first book "We Are All One: A call to spiritual uprising". Written in just six days, the critically acclaimed work was the WINNER of the 2009 Allbooks International Editor’s Choice Award (USA) in the Spirituality & Inspiration category.

By January 2009 he accepted an invitation to teach alongside Barbara Marx-Hubbard, Esther Hicks, Steve and Barbara Rother and others on the international seminar series ‘Intimate conversations with Masters and Mystics' hosted by Linda L. Pannell.

Jonathan’s second book ‘NAKED BEING: Undressing Your Mind, Transforming Your Life’ – was published by O books on the 28th May 2010. Further kudos followed when it was honored as a Best Books Award Finalist 2010 (USA Book News) in the genre of Spirituality.

During a vacation in France in 2013, Jonathan wrote his first novel THE SOUL WHISPERER. The novel is a cross-genre mix of fact and fiction, blended with the many experiences and phenomena that have taken place in the author’s life. The completed manuscript caught the imagination of international publishers, and a deal was struck with Roundfire Books in 2015.

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A Decent Woman by Eleanor Parker ~ FREE on Amazon 11/9 thru 11/14

Title: A Decent Woman

Author: Eleanor Parker

Genre: Historical Fiction 

Ponce, Puerto Rico, at the turn of the century: Ana Belén Opaku, an Afro-Cuban born into slavery, is a proud midwife with a tempestuous past. After testifying at an infanticide trial, Ana is forced to reveal a dark secret from her past, but continues to hide an even more sinister one. 

 A crime against Serafina during her last pregnancy forever bonds her to Ana in an ill-conceived plan to avoid a scandal and preserve Serafina’s honor.

Set against the combustive backdrop of a chauvinistic society, where women are treated as possessions, A Decent Woman is the provocative story of these two women as they battle for their dignity and for love against the pain of betrayal and social change.

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Puerto Rican-born novelist, Eleanor Parker Sapia, was raised in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Europe. Eleanor’s life experiences as a counselor, alternative health practitioner, a Spanish language social worker, and a refugee case worker, inspire her passion for writing. When Eleanor is not writing, she facilitates creativity groups, and is making plans to walk El Camino de Santiago a second time. A Decent Woman is her debut novel. Eleanor is the mother of two adult children, and she lives in West Virginia.