Liz has a quiet determination to overcome the obstacles that have beset her with the collapse of her husband's property business when the economic climate drastically struck. She has many new hurdles to surmount before she finds happiness, but through it all is still the lovely warm hearted girl.

Midwestern Journal is a serious story embroidered with subtle humor in which the leading character is caught in a void between the past and the present. Midwestern Journal’s form is unique. It is in the format of a journal or diary, a double diary. Each chapter is a journal entry by the main character, Edward Ellis, which is preceded by a diary entry by his great-grandmother. In most cases, these dated diary entries by the great-grandmother serve as a prelude to the material in the main text. Her material gives us a solid touchstone with the past, and it shows the Midwest symbolically maturing and declining as if it was a person, an aging lady to be exact. For the most part, the chapters are microstories complete in their own right; but when placed end to end, they make a larger story with its own beginning and ending. In that regard, the book has similarities with Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; Caldwell’s Georgia Boy; or Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. A comic farmer friend, simply named “Pierson,” is developed to allow Edward Ellis, the narrator, to occasionally play the straight man. More often than not, the two team up to misinterpret their surroundings. Pierson is a fatuous fellow, immune to modern thinking. However, few of the other characters are left unaffected by the seepage of modern technology, morals, and depersonalization into the cracks of Midwestern life. This is not a sob story. Actually many of the chapters are told in a humorous vein by a character who is trying his best to learn how to live. He is not bitter, only bewildered.

Midwestern Journal is a serious story embroidered with subtle humor in which the leading character is caught in a void between the past and the present. Midwestern Journal’s form is unique. It is in the format of a journal or diary, a double diary. Each chapter is a journal entry by the main character, Edward Ellis, which is preceded by a diary entry by his great-grandmother. In most cases, these dated diary entries by the great-grandmother serve as a prelude to the material in the main text. Her material gives us a solid touchstone with the past, and it shows the Midwest symbolically maturing and declining as if it was a person, an aging lady to be exact. For the most part, the chapters are microstories complete in their own right; but when placed end to end, they make a larger story with its own beginning and ending. In that regard, the book has similarities with Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; Caldwell’s Georgia Boy; or Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. A comic farmer friend, simply named “Pierson,” is developed to allow Edward Ellis, the narrator, to occasionally play the straight man. More often than not, the two team up to misinterpret their surroundings. Pierson is a fatuous fellow, immune to modern thinking. However, few of the other characters are left unaffected by the seepage of modern technology, morals, and depersonalization into the cracks of Midwestern life. This is not a sob story. Actually many of the chapters are told in a humorous vein by a character who is trying his best to learn how to live. He is not bitter, only bewildered.

Midwestern Journal is a serious story embroidered with subtle humor in which the leading character is caught in a void between the past and the present. Midwestern Journal’s form is unique. It is in the format of a journal or diary, a double diary. Each chapter is a journal entry by the main character, Edward Ellis, which is preceded by a diary entry by his great-grandmother. In most cases, these dated diary entries by the great-grandmother serve as a prelude to the material in the main text. Her material gives us a solid touchstone with the past, and it shows the Midwest symbolically maturing and declining as if it was a person, an aging lady to be exact. For the most part, the chapters are microstories complete in their own right; but when placed end to end, they make a larger story with its own beginning and ending. In that regard, the book has similarities with Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; Caldwell’s Georgia Boy; or Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. A comic farmer friend, simply named “Pierson,” is developed to allow Edward Ellis, the narrator, to occasionally play the straight man. More often than not, the two team up to misinterpret their surroundings. Pierson is a fatuous fellow, immune to modern thinking. However, few of the other characters are left unaffected by the seepage of modern technology, morals, and depersonalization into the cracks of Midwestern life. This is not a sob story. Actually many of the chapters are told in a humorous vein by a character who is trying his best to learn how to live. He is not bitter, only bewildered.

The story of a child who cries for help in the dark in hopes of finding a way to the light, without knowing that he is part of that darkness and light himself. The child was born between two tribes: darkness tribe and lightning tribe. His mother, Adjo, wandered off from the darkness tribe to meet her lover, who was the child’s father, Kafui, from the lightning tribe. They both knew their union could be fatal because of the differences of their tribes, but their love blinded them to know how different they were. Their inevitable love was rejected by both the darkness tribe and lightning tribe.

Worried about the outcome of their forbidden love, they suddenly got scared and fled from the mistake they had made; the two lovers realized how their difference could not be reconciled. They both rejoined their tribes for fear of meeting again, but it was too late because the seed of their love already began to sprout into an unborn child. From their inevitable love came a newborn child who was a combination of the two tribes of darkness and lightning and whom the two tribes decided to eliminate.

There was an elderly woman in the darkness tribe named Pauline, who seemed to be the child’s grandmother and who had supernatural powers that could balance both darkness and lightning. The elderly woman then secretly took the child for fear that both lightning and darkness tribes could destroy the child and that the mother could not balance the two combinations of darkness and lightning within the child and protect him at the same time. The elderly woman Pauline escaped to many different tribes to raise the child; she named the child Komla, meaning “the birth of two strong powers.”

Growing up, Komla realized he was part of the darkness and the lightning tribes, who rejected him, and that he lost the only sparkle of light that cared and protected him. He felt lonely, and out of blame, he projected himself into a nocturnal darkness.

A Day of Life: Moments in Time takes mankind as a protagonist on a daily journey through time where one human seven billion days ago counts down to day one and an environment coping with seven billion humans. The author tries to create a conscious awareness within the reader of the five life-forms and the six constants—the imbalance of which has plagued mankind to this day. A Day of Life is meant to encourage the reader to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the life-forms and constants and to make choices as to the immanency of a possible systemic collapse from exponential expansion.

The Adventures of Selwyn and Robert began when the author was a teenager creating bedtime stories for her young nephews, who eagerly awaited each nightly installment. Each story had a message, and each adventure was different. This particular adventure starts with a journey to the farm. Selwyn and Robert meet pixies who are concerned that the children, during their visits to the farm on the weekends, tend to have cruel habits regarding animals and other creatures, and they introduce Selwyn and Robert to an unobtrusive way of influencing them toward being kinder.

Manouch by Anne Welters He came from one part of the world, and she came from another. When he saw her for the first time, he knew he wanted her for his wife. Patiently he waited until she was ready. Their love was like the first ray of sunlight in the morning and like the silver ray of the moon on a clear night. Their children were their greatest joy and their worst nightmare. He was strikingly handsome with his black hair and eyes like molten chocolate. She was petite with a smile that turned to steel when it was needed. Her name was Manouch, and Salem was patient.

Destiny is an emotional love story based on two different cultures. It deals with love, loss, and fate and is a young adult romance novel that will appeal to everyone: fantasy readers, hopeless romantics, as well as those who enjoy a good story and a happy ending. It is not just a romance or a problem novel but explores the issues of racism and family loyalty in these two different angles. The story is set in the summer of 1989 on an island in the Caribbean. It talks about two main characters: Sheena Becker, a young woman in her twenties who, like many, dreams of something that is very difficult to have because of cultural differences, and Jonathan Samson, aged twenty-nine, who comes from one of the wealthiest business families in Seattle. He has a very tough relationship with his father who has a strong and powerful character, giving orders to his son that drains him. The two protagonists are brought together, and their forbidden relationship begins to blossom, but because of their relationship, the circumstances of culture begin to tear them apart where their lives were changed forever. There is a conflict between the two families that are so deep, but at the end, their loves wins all.

If God has created Adam for his own entertainment, and Eve for Adam’s, then what did Eve design for her own entertainment, and what means does she create for that sake? Why does she excuse the act of stepping on her shadow, is she really this resilient on forgiveness or does she have a hidden agenda lurking behind? Who returned the balance to the equator of the world, and what elements constantly revive the madness of love?! The unusual love shared by these very ordinary characters reverts into madness as it succumbs the world to them and them to the ancient world, will they constantly be revived by this beautiful sense of madness, or will they become memories, voicing a love echoed by each and every cell of their being, magnified by the touches of the hands of wind, tainted by fear and thoughts of independence into inhalation, if it ever exists in love and madness?!

Hamid Karam

Filmmaker/ Producer/ Actor/ Model

A Day of Life: Moments in Time takes mankind as a protagonist on a daily journey through time where one human seven billion days ago counts down to day one and an environment coping with seven billion humans. The author tries to create a conscious awareness within the reader of the five life-forms and the six constants—the imbalance of which has plagued mankind to this day. A Day of Life is meant to encourage the reader to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the life-forms and constants and to make choices as to the immanency of a possible systemic collapse from exponential expansion.

A Day of Life: Moments in Time takes mankind as a protagonist on a daily journey through time where one human seven billion days ago counts down to day one and an environment coping with seven billion humans. The author tries to create a conscious awareness within the reader of the five life-forms and the six constants—the imbalance of which has plagued mankind to this day. A Day of Life is meant to encourage the reader to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the life-forms and constants and to make choices as to the immanency of a possible systemic collapse from exponential expansion.

The story of a child who cries for help in the dark in hopes of finding a way to the light, without knowing that he is part of that darkness and light himself. The child was born between two tribes: darkness tribe and lightning tribe. His mother, Adjo, wandered off from the darkness tribe to meet her lover, who was the child’s father, Kafui, from the lightning tribe. They both knew their union could be fatal because of the differences of their tribes, but their love blinded them to know how different they were. Their inevitable love was rejected by both the darkness tribe and lightning tribe.

Worried about the outcome of their forbidden love, they suddenly got scared and fled from the mistake they had made; the two lovers realized how their difference could not be reconciled. They both rejoined their tribes for fear of meeting again, but it was too late because the seed of their love already began to sprout into an unborn child. From their inevitable love came a newborn child who was a combination of the two tribes of darkness and lightning and whom the two tribes decided to eliminate.

There was an elderly woman in the darkness tribe named Pauline, who seemed to be the child’s grandmother and who had supernatural powers that could balance both darkness and lightning. The elderly woman then secretly took the child for fear that both lightning and darkness tribes could destroy the child and that the mother could not balance the two combinations of darkness and lightning within the child and protect him at the same time. The elderly woman Pauline escaped to many different tribes to raise the child; she named the child Komla, meaning “the birth of two strong powers.”

Growing up, Komla realized he was part of the darkness and the lightning tribes, who rejected him, and that he lost the only sparkle of light that cared and protected him. He felt lonely, and out of blame, he projected himself into a nocturnal darkness.

Roses from the Orphanage is a fairy tale of twin sisters who lived in an orphanage long time ago, in an imaginary city of Zeyoun on a coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The twins were little when abandoned at the doorstep of Madam Ghalba, a wealthy and sympathetic lady who owned the orphanage. The lady took care of the twins like her own from childhood to grown-up beautiful girls; unfortunately, they turned out to be two different individuals. As a result of the obsession of immoral desires by one of the sisters, they were separated in a mysterious way and lost each other for good, or at least that was how it seems. However, fate was on their side, and due to their strong bond of love and hope of being together again, the twin sisters found each other in extraordinary circumstances.

In the early 1930s, young Ace Smart is eight years old when his father, a physician, is found hung in his office, and his mother, a writer in the Harlem Renaissnce, dies soon after. He grows up bitterly, marries, and raises two daughters. This is the story of the spiritual journey of one of his daughters. Evidence of the past and feelings of the famiy emerge as Mia is hospitlized in a mental hospital. Ace’s secret affair with Vanav weaves suspense when Ace discovers that Vanav was his wife’s best friend in childhood. Vanav has only known freedom and has kept the knowledge and science of her people from the island of Sokotra in the Indian Ocean. She is close to Mia and shared her knowledge with Mia’s mother. Ace later finds that his father and grandparents were affiliated with people from that island who settled in Steelton, Pennsylvania, and worked with the underground railroad. Quakers, Muslims, and Jews were involved in the movement. Family ideas about the African American experience are an issue as is the remedy for Mia. The family has ties with the struggle for honor and with an ancient healing that comes from knowledge of the blood or red resin from the dragon tree of Sokotra. Unexpected events occur when Ace finally gets rid of his hostility and Mia fights for her mental and emotional freedom. This story is woven with poetry, in an out of time as its powerful messages leave an important imprint on the heart.