Beauty for Ashes

Raised in a strict Pentecostal home and shaped by humble beginnings, Jimmel Franklin’s life has been marked by unexpected detours, heartbreak, and seasons of uncertainty. From childhood trauma and difficult relationships to divorce, single motherhood, financial struggles, and the challenge of starting over, she has walked through valleys that could have left her broken.

But this is not a story about defeat—it’s a story about God’s faithfulness.

With honesty and hope, Jimmel shares how God’s hand guided her through every trial, opened doors when none seemed possible, and transformed pain into purpose. Through every setback, He was working behind the scenes, proving that no circumstance is beyond His power to redeem.

This inspiring memoir will encourage you to trust God when the way forward is unclear, remain faithful in difficult seasons, and believe that even your greatest trials can become your greatest testimony. If you’ve ever wondered whether God sees your pain or has a plan for your life, this book is a reminder that He is always making a way—even when you cannot yet see it.

My Salary Retired

My Salary Retired is the true story of the shift of the American Dream from a communal spiritual ideal to a personal quest for retirement security through the lives of a dozen Americans from the heartland and the author. It chronicles the impact of the social and sexual revolution on the lives of Americans and the decline of traditional values. My Salary Retired explores the search for life’s meaning in retirement and the enduring value of relationships and community. According to the author, George Zimmar, “My salary retired, but I am still working.”

Nowhere to Everywhere

In the memoir Nowhere to Everywhere, Bhup is describing his true life experiences after surviving childhood sexual abuse, severe poverty, and economical hardships while completing high school and college education in India while at the same time appreciating his parents’ sacrifices for his education.

Later, in his mid-30s, he moved to the USA for graduate study, and then, as a proud naturalized American citizen, he has been exploring his childhood dream of becoming a research scientist, running marathons, and travelling all seven continents; while still absorbing the sorrows of his father’s, mother’s, and sister’s deaths with deep pain of being unable to attend their funerals and the recent unfortunate family split. A deep-running story reflects his deep belief in “Dream Big, Jump In, and Never Give Up!”

From the Ashes: The Fire This Time

I was born into a world already on fire—North Philadelphia heat, church-pew hymns, schoolhouse judgments, and the quiet blaze of a boy trying to become whole in a country that rarely makes room for his full humanity. I learned early how to wear confidence like armor. How to survive the Veil. How to keep moving even when shame tried to name me.

From the Ashes: The Fire This Time is not a story about perfection—it’s a story about return. Return to the sacred grounding of a grandmother’s discipline and love. Return to lineage—HBCU footsteps and ancestral memory. Return to Black love that refuses to hide. Return to a self no longer performed for approval but claimed in truth.

Braiding Baldwin’s fire, Du Bois’s veil, and Akbar’s African-centered call to know thyself, Lewis Thomas III offers a memoir that reads like a testimony and a map. With lyrical honesty and unflinching tenderness, he invites readers into the heat where identity is forged, where community becomes salvation, and where radical healing is not a destination but a practice.

For anyone who has ever been misseen, mislabeled, or made to doubt their worth: this book is a reminder—you have always been worthy of everything.

This Thing Called Life

As we live out our full lives, we will be around for about 70 to 80 years or more.

What do we do for our kids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids, and others to perceive as important in their lives? Does it revolve around relationships? Most empathetically, yes! How do we treat others or want to be treated by others? This is how one person processed the events in their life to find meaning and relevance to come out stronger.

Jousting with Death

Jousting with Death relates the many interesting experiences required to become an internationally recognized heart surgeon researcher. Just to become certified as such takes fourteen very busy years. Then in training, as afterward in practice, life can be fully lived and not just experienced. For an appropriate mindset, my hobbies were skydiving and cave diving. Old New Orleans, a tour in the military, and professorships at Tulane and Baylor College of Medicine, which were the places modern heart surgery originated, were filled with phenomenal happenings, which are described in detail. Overall, my four decades of medical practice earned seventy awards and recognitions.

Caribbean Podcasting

Caribbean Podcasting tells the story of the Legal Corner Podcast Series. Follow the author on his real-life journey: from his beginnings in rural Trinidad and Tobago, through high school, to eventually becoming a lawyer, writer, and podcaster. Along the way, he forges an unexpected alliance that enables two sworn enemies in high school to embark on the journey of a lifetime to create a global podcast together.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to start your own podcast and build an audience from scratch? This book comes directly from the trenches of the often confusing and intimidating world of indie podcasting. It takes you behind the scenes and provides a blueprint that can serve as an inspiration for all of your podcasting endeavours. Caribbean Podcasting is an inspiring story of resilience and what is possible through careful planning and diligent execution over time.

Whether you are an aspiring podcaster, lawyer, student, or just a media enthusiast, this book is for you.

Bea the One

Bea didn’t choose the chaos—chaos circled her name, underlined it twice, and showed up early. In this brutally funny, sharp-tongued memoir, she drags you through the beautiful wreckage of a life that refused to behave. With wit as dark as her luck and humor sharp enough to perform its own surgery, Bea turns trauma into punchlines and catastrophe into confession.

This isn’t a story you read politely.

It’s one you inhale.

One that grabs you by the collar, laughs in your face, and whispers, “Trust me—my disasters are more entertaining than your therapy.”

Step inside. Bea’s got stories. And they bite.

To Mr. Brummell My Best Teacher

A migrant teacher from Guyana, with no special education experience, is sent to teach an uncontrollable junior high school special education eighth-grade class that no one wants in a tough Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood, but he battles the challenges of disgusting unruliness, sickening apathy, and jarring disrespectfulness and overcomes them. It’s only the beginning, though, as each successive year comes with difficulties that he must triumph over to deliver meaningful academic instruction.

The public will appreciate this book for its clear language and raw honesty, and some people who treat teachers with indifference will develop respect for them.  Parents uninvolved in their children’s school life, or who are marginally involved, will re-examine themselves and pay closer attention to their children’s academic progress and behavior. However, teachers in the United States and other countries will love learning from a former educator’s true, thorny classroom experiences and what he did to be victorious over them.

Juglar de Pueblo

Un viaje increíble donde el comercio se mezcla con la picardía, la miseria con el ingenio, y la inocencia se pierde entre ferias, estafas y ruletas.

A través de la mirada curiosa de un joven aprendiz de comerciante, Juglar de Pueblo nos sumerge en las entrañas del mundo ambulante de los comerciantes de las ferias del ayer, revelando una fauna de personajes memorables: ruleteros, cocineras, culebreros, falsificadores y soñadores.

Escrito con humor, ternura y una aguda crítica social, este relato oral convertido en crónica vibrante retrata el alma popular de un comunidad que sobrevive a punta de astucia, sudor y esperanza.

Contado como se habla en la calle y con la memoria de quien lo vivió todo, este libro no embellece ni esconde nada. Porque a veces, la mejor literatura es la que no se inventa, si no la que se recuerda.

Una novela entrañable, callejera y profundamente humana.

The Walls of Villa Fatema

The Walls of Villa Fatema follows the unexpected journey of an American girl who finds herself a guest in a traditional Moroccan family’s home in Casablanca, the port city made famous by the classic film starring Humphrey Bogart.

By turns humorous and unsettling, this memoir by Avery Russell captures Alice’s struggle to navigate – and sometimes ignore – the complexities of a sex-segregated society.

Rich in detail and cultural insight, the book offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women in 1960s Morocco and explores the tension and fascination that arise when two very different worlds collide.

Muslim School Dropout

Muslim School Dropout is the uproariously honest semi-autobiographical life of Amir Yass, a gay Persian Muslim who traded Quran recitations for comedy sets under Hollywood lights.

Growing up in a conservative Iranian-American family, Amir was the golden child—until he dropped out of Islamic school, came out of the closet, and discovered that prayer rugs and punchlines don’t always mix. From awkward mosque moments to wild West Hollywood nights, Amir takes readers on a whirlwind journey through identity, faith, and finding your voice when you’re caught between worlds.

With razor-sharp humor and heartfelt vulnerability, Muslim School Dropout is a coming-of-age tale for anyone who’s ever felt like the ultimate outsider—and learned to turn that into their superpower.