Just Like Us

After Jenny’s best friend and next-door neighbor, Ashley, moves out of the neighborhood, she is sad and lonely for a pretty long time. Then one day, she is excited to see a new family move in with a girl about her age. But the members of this new family are really weird: the mom wears a flowing robe and a turban, the dad dons a thick black beard, and they speak an alien tongue. Maybe they are Martians from outer space.

Jenny’s fears get worse as she watches more strange, mysterious and alien characters dropping in at their house from time to time. What happens next comes as a surprise!

Kabaslot

Life for Allison Johnson, a young girl growing up in the heart of a thriving independent capital city, was good. Part of a well-to-do Krio family, she and her siblings had enjoyed the best of everything, and Allison was quick to share her life with their new adoptive sister, an orphan from the provinces.

Just as she starts to discover love with an unlikely suitor, tragedy strikes. The Republic is in crisis. As events spiral out of control, Allison’s life as she knows it is turned upside down. On the other side of a vicious civil war, she must give up everything she has known as home, to seek safety in the United States.

Navigating the turn of events and her new life as an immigrant, she finds strength and resilience she had only heard about in the stories of her ancestors.

She immerses herself in a quest for spiritual restoration until a sudden shift puts her at the center of a plot to bring the decayed Republic back from the brink. She’s intrigued by the opportunity but must contend with ghosts from a dark past.

Karen’s Spiritual Pilgrim Journey

This book describes my days on a pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel before the pandemic hit the world, and my feelings and thoughts on each day of the magnificence, serenity, and deeply felt love in each and everything I did with the assigned group of each day. Even today I shed tears when reflecting on my time and being in the presence of such grandeur and beauty. The Baháʼí Faith is just waiting for receptive souls to reach out and grasp hold of the reigns of this glorious pathway to gain virtue and practice daily good deeds. I sit and wonder at how I have been blessed with this wondrous ‘Prescription for Living’ (Rabbani, 1950) in my days of material living. I offer to the readers a glimpse of my journey with the thought that maybe you also are searching, seeking, wondering, ‘where can I find the place I belong?’ The Baháʼí Faith may be that place for you.

Knysna Forest

Sparky, a 19-year old, quick-witted thrill-seeker, went hiking in the majestic Knysna forest in South Africa upon returning from the United Kingdom. After a series of bad decisions, driven by stubbornness, he tumbles off a cliff with no turning back.

Wounded, lost, low on supplies, and without any knowledge of survival, he is plagued by nature’s lethal attacks until he is too weak to carry on. As dusk and dehydration ominously takes its toll, he is faced with fears he never anticipated.

As death approaches mercilessly again and again, he must fight above willpower to stay alive. With every calculated risk, less calculated, hope, survival, and divine intervention, becomes a distant dream.

Knysna Forest is an epic, true miracle race-against-time survival-story that will leave adventurers astounded in anticipation.

“If you are reading this, it means that you are experiencing the result of a miracle, because how is it possible that I survived death, more than once?”

Kristy, Mikey, and Harley D the Cat

Kristy and Mikey are siblings and best friends. They play together every day but not today. Today, all Kristy wants to do is be alone and read her new storybook, but her little brother has some other ideas. If that is not enough, Mikey thinks he is a superhero that can fly through the air. Honestly, how much can a girl take? Kristy has to find a way to escape, but how?

Kristy, Mikey, and Harley D the Cat - Book 2

Kristy, Mikey, and Harley D the Cat love Halloween! It is the only night of the year when anything and everything is possible and when you can sometimes see the impossible.

Halloween is a truly magical night filled with carved pumpkins, colorful costumes, and lots and lots of candy.

Who would not love a special night like this?

Finally, Halloween arrived, and the house was decorated and ready for all the neighborhood kids.

Kristy & Mikey could not have been more excited... even Harley D was ready with his costume.

What could possibly go wrong?

Laphatton

The year is 2064, and the world is in chaos. Our story begins at a Survival Training Camp for teens on Roosevelt Island, New York. As the campers pick through the ruins that the war left behind, four young souls stumble upon a time portal and are transported to the 1600s. They arrive with three books, a chess set, needles and thread, and a new feeling: hope. The Lenni Lenape Tribe in residence on the island have noted their presence, and so begins the tale as the interlopers try to carve out a future from the past.

Laughing Out of Context

Mia, mother of her six-year-old son, Cody, strives to balance care and volunteering at Cody’s school the only way she knows how: by recuperating nightly in what she calls her escape room. Meditation and a little bit of solitude at night can fix some hectic mothering days, but sometimes a glass of wine is just what is needed for those extra challenging kids-tell-all no-filter moments.

With the family Dalmatian, Caesar, right by Cody’s side in mischief, Mia works overtime to dodge embarrassing public incidents, hoping her imaginary hats will finally work in making her invisible at just the right time. By getting weekly advice from her mom’s group, Mia realizes she’s not alone in this crazy, funny, and loving motherhood journey.

The struggle is real, and finding a better motherhood routine is right at the top of her list of things to do, before she tips over to the other side of the sanity line.

Leah Marie and Santa

In the times we are living in, we all need to be more aware that we shouldn’t be focusing on differences, but rather on how we are alike. Most children dream of the magical man in the red suit who visits them with gifts during the holidays in December. However, some children may worry that Santa may not know what they’d like because they have difficulty communicating.

In this story, Leah Marie, a little girl with Down syndrome who can’t speak clearly, wonders whether Santa will know what she wants for Christmas. She solves her dilemma by using her own way of communicating and learns that Santa understands all children.

The moments shared in this book come directly from the experiences of Leah Marie, the great-granddaughter of one of the authors. This book is relatable to all families, caretakers and teachers who struggle to help children realize the many ways they can express their thoughts and feelings.

There is a positive message at the end about creative and unique ways to communicate with others. This is a must-read for a wide audience of those who live with and interact with children of all ages and abilities every day.

Learning How to Let It Go in the Shadow of the Belvedere

Sometimes it becomes difficult for us to recognize the beauty of the forest in its full splendour and diverse grandeur, even though it has always been right in front of us. Our view becomes obscured by the thick, opaque tangle of branches. To overcome this universal challenge for us all, we need to be able to adopt a new perspective. This can come from meeting new people and considering their point of view, or even by putting oneself in an entirely different time and place. In doing so, even the most stubborn and set-in-their ways can be jostled out of their slumber and comforting complacency.

The elements necessary for this process of self-transformation are already in our souls for those who allow them to surface, while for others who are more resistant, a more literal journey can be exactly what is required to shake us loose from our preconceived notions.

Let Me Tell You a Story

Storytelling has been an art and form of entertainment for many cultures for thousands of years. Every family has their special stories. In this way culture is created and passed down to future generations. The stories in this collection represent five generations of our family. Our family would sit around a dinner table or a campfire and tell and retell these stories from the past. Our family loved the sharing of humor through this special communication. In this way we also shared each other’s lives. My family has asked that I record these so that they will be passed on to future generations so that they might enjoy them as well. All of the stories elicit laughter because of the humor. The stories are organized around themes. The one thing that is constant about the stories is that they are all “true stories”.

Let's Have a Parade

The countdown begins, and the band strikes to play! Those famous words are announced: "Let's have a parade!" From the lead stars, the highly popular high-kicking Rockettes, and of course, the big guy in red, Santa Claus, we kick off the holiday season down 6th Avenue as people gather in the streets of New York City to give thanks at the infamous Thanksgiving Day Parade!