The Rock in Our Story

Just when ten-year-old Maria Della Notte becomes comfortable with her surrogate mother and their surroundings she discovers an unsettling truth about her origin. Who is she? How did she get here? Why does she have a surrogate mother? Who left her in the care of a surrogate mother and why? Where did she come from? Why is she forced to leave? Can she learn to live in a new country without family or friends where language, customs and traditions are unfamiliar and intimidating? Whom can she trust? Will she ever love and be loved? Will she find answers to her endless questions?

Coming from a poverty-stricken, war-torn country, Maria quickly learns the benefits and advantages of wealth, education and her new life in a place filled with opportunity. While she is pleased with her newly acquired affluence and experiences, Maria has never been truly happy since she left her homeland. The friendship she offers at school, and the kindness she extends to some of her classmates is met with ridicule and rejection.

At every turn, Maria feels unloved, so she withdraws and buries herself in studies and extracurricular activities. She strives to be the best at every challenge put before her. Her goals stretch far beyond seeking not only to win, but to win by a landslide.

Maria is a young lady dreaming of reconnecting with her mentor, while carrying a big chip on her shoulder waiting for the right someone to gently remove it.

The Jungle Entrepreneurs

Allen and Franco are two young entrepreneurs coasting their last year of Business School in New York. Feeling drained and uninspired by the pressures of success, they take on an expected journey to the jungle of Costa Rica, where they will do what they can to make a business out of an old, abandoned property, submerged in local rumors.

Once surrounded by the power of the place, they unravel an unexpected family history, which will take them on a wild and spiritual inner journey. The struggles of arduous work and lack of resources will shape these men’s partnership, new friendships, and the way they each understand their lives.

In this intimate tale, N.V. Parks takes us on a unique spiritual journey, a rite of healing and transformation into adulthood, unraveling a new meaning of happiness and success, while soaking in the magnificent beauty of Ostional Wildlife Refuge.

The Air That We Breathe - Book One

Father Marcellinus warns the young monk, saying, ‘The air that we breathe, that is the creature that we become’ explaining how every influence, both good and evil ultimately shape us into the person that we are. Based on real events, this novel unfolds in a nineteenth century abbey and is about a young man who struggles to face the truth of who he really is, something that all of us must ultimately do in our own lives. The reader is invited into that cloister, so full of passions and conflicts.

Simon desires only one thing since he was a little boy, and that is to serve God as a priest. He dreams of wearing silken gold vestments and being enveloped in great clouds of incense, offering the Sacrifice to God. When he is seventeen, he leaves home and becomes a monk far north in the mountains of Pennsylvania. His faith is genuine, and he gives himself to his studies in order to become a Roman Catholic priest.

But not all is as he expected. A sexual awakening he had not anticipated, blossoms in him and boyhood dreams are shaken to the core as he wrestles with a side of himself he never counted on. He falls in love in a monastic world filled with holy men, mischievous souls, colorful individuals and also great scoundrels.

A powerful visitor invites him to Rome, something Simon never expected. There is a dark price tag, however, something Simon is unaware of.

Submission

This is a story about a marriage breakdown and the difficulties facing primarily women in protecting themselves and in collecting support payments under the Ontario justice system.

This is a story about justice delayed, justice denied, and how the justice system failed to level the playing field.

Every day a woman is demoralized in not being able to collect on support orders.

Every day in Canada a woman is subjected to ongoing abuse with her partner with minimal assistance through the legal system.

This story is typical of a woman’s plight going through a legal system where the parties have lost faith and face the dilemma of giving up or taking the law into their own hands.

Sacred Life and Demons

Is life sacred, and to whom? If our lives are sacred to each of us, should we be in control of how we are to die? Or should questions of life and death be answered only by those who believe and interpret the Bible as the will of a supernatural creator god? Does the Bible confirm the existence of a god who loves, and would never harm, an innocent child? Did this god create our reproductive processes such that the most unique human DNA ends in abortion? Or, are spontaneous abortions just the result of sin? How do we define a person, and when does a unique human DNA become a person? Is elective abortion murder? Do demons really exist? This nation is in serious conflict over the answers to these questions.

Dr. Tom Tanner, an oncologist in a Mississippi town, becomes entangled in all these questions and in the mystery of a boy thought by some to be of supernatural birth. Perhaps the boy is a demon.

Powder River, 1957

“The year my mother left us, my father found a dog along the highway just outside of Powder River.”

Thus opens the beginning of sixteen-year-old Matthew Christman’s account of his senior year. Reeling from his loss, Matthew struggles to make sense of the adult world into which he has been forced to enter prematurely. He faces other losses, foremost among them his innocence, as he tries to figure out the difference between being a man’s man, or a good man like his father.

The threat of death is ever present for Matthew as he learns the value of love and friendship in his journey to find his way in a world fraught with unpredictable challenges.

Owed to My Mother

Nadine has always excelled in her career and had just reached the next level of her success, which brought her to the company’s illustrious complex outside of San Francisco, CA; but as she begins to get settled into this new chapter of her life, she learns that her mother’s cancer is now stage 4 and she’s forced to make a choice between staying where she is or going to be with her mother.  She chooses her mother and the story that unfolds from there is filled with heartfelt humor, ridiculous sarcasm and examples of their forever love.
This book is historical fiction and based on a true story, and nothing exemplifies that fact better than the sacrifices made between this mother and her child.  Be sure to have your Kleenex handy when you read this book, because whether you laugh or cry, you’re going to need them.

Living With the Little Devil Man

Sterling was another soul lost to addiction. He was a schizophrenic plagued by the little devil man. Heroin saved him from that reality so many times. Most people aren’t plagued by creatures, but what are they plagued by? What reality are they escaping? Sterling’s story gives us some of the answers we seek. One thing is for certain, his story teaches us the importance of human connection and how to love. Not to love the addiction, but to love the person behind the addiction. It teaches us to the importance of helping others through dark times without judgment. This emotionally riveting story shows how good can triumph over evil in ways we never can anticipate. Expect to both cry and laugh.

‘“Living with the Little Devil Man” introduces us to Sterling, a young man with searing blue eyes. The life Sterling was dealt: childhood cruelty, serious mental illness, and addiction, is woven into an energetic, funny, attractive young man that we come to care for as much as his adoptive mother who opened her home and family to him. Who does that? Who lets in addiction and mental illness, sleepless nights, and worry? This story is unaltered by resentment or judgment. It is a frank telling of one young life, lived with zest despite the terrible odds against him, and the woman who opens our hearts to let him in.’ Dominique Simon-Levine PhD—Founder of AlliesinRecovery.net

‘Reading “Living with the Little Devil Man” was like being on a train that I knew was going to be wrecked. I was on the train, I met all of the passengers and developed feelings for them and about them. I desperately wanted to be able to stop that train. I cried so many times while reading the book that I can't count them. This book encompasses intimacy, compassion, and horror, but it also gives us a sense of hope, passion, and transcendence.’ Eugene Isaak, J.D.—Author in Recovery

‘“Living with the Little Devil Man” is a gripping story about the demons of addiction and the struggles with mental illness during the course of a young man`s life. “Living with the Little Devil Man” brings out the humanistic side of it all and teaches us to love unconditionally, especially those who struggle with addiction and mental illness.’ J. Bruno – Narcotics Detective 20+ yea

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.

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.

Ibo's Landing

Two families on Edisto Island, SC are convulsed by the mixed-race child of a white woman and her black lover. Set between 1959 and 1994, this explosive novel poses crucial questions about the extent to which two families can escape the legacy of slavery. Why do even well-meaning modern men and women become bearers of the south’s sadistic practices?

I Found Me

A volatile, abusive marriage. Loss of confidence and a sense of identity. A journey in search of redemption. Ah… the weekend – what a holy mess! What an unholy mess in fact! That weekend, I watched as Jack reeled about drunkenly and insulting friends. All veneers and facades were stripped away. He revealed to everyone the ugly side he usually saved for me. And there was nothing I could do. The cat was not just out of the bag, it had ripped its way out, yowling and tearing, nasty and vicious. There was no conceivable way to hide, diffuse or halt the raging storm. I could only watch aghast, horrified, embarrassed, and so, so sad. I was ashamed and full of sorrow for myself, and for Jack. I watched in horror as this once-charming man, staggering about, stripped away all years of my shielding, protecting, and covering up his dark side. I was beyond shame and beyond humiliated. Now, everyone knew the dark side of Jack and the secretive, weak, pitiable side of me.