A Trunk in the Basement

Relationships involving love, lies, loss and loyalty are everlasting stories throughout Southern Culture. Marriage, affairs, relationships, friendships and life’s dreams never come out perfect or last forever. It becomes a growing and changing experience where the characters learn as they come and go in time and importance to others, while still managing to make a difference.

This collection contains ten short stories of such change, lament, and brief happiness, all by circumstance, and rarely planned. The characters adapt and try to maintain their uncertain world, always hoping for the best but rarely achieving it.

Come along as they deal with these changes the best way they can and experience life, seemingly always on the edge. While they may always seem flawed, the reader will come to love these characters for who they are regardless of the stage of life or circumstances they currently live within.

A Stab in the Heartland

Taking place across the Midwest’s heartland of America, this collection of short stories offers nuance to the darker aspects of human relationships. Told primarily from the intoxicating beginnings of lust before progressing toward love, the stories fluidly transform into stark realities rather than romantic ideals. Each story provides an intimate look at how commitment and affection can turn into disloyalty or even hatred. 

With subtle mystery and humor sprinkled throughout, readers will be fascinated and shocked at where these winding plots lead, both physically and psychologically. Though at times jarring, the stories ultimately highlight the complexity of bonds between people in both their beauty and brutality.

A Kind of Cousin

A Kind of Cousin is a daring collection of short stories by Suenel Bruwer-Holloway that whisks readers on a journey through the raw and unapologetic facets of human experience. Like a fresh breeze, blowing irreverently through old taboos, sweeping away the cobwebs of political correctness, Holloway shatters the confines of political correctness, delving into the resilient and complex spirit that pulses through her homeland, a place of beauty, sorrow, and resilience.

From the wily old woman in ‘The Statistic’, cleverly hoarding her exit from this world, to the candid wisdom of a child in the titular ‘A Kind of Cousin’, and the unflinching gaze cast upon society’s underbelly in ‘The Healer’, these stories are as provocative as they are enlightening. ‘The Right Therapist’ delivers a satirical jab at the mental health profession, while ‘Horseflesh’ pays homage to the enduring spirit of an old donkey, a symbol of unyielding courage in the face of adversity.

Strap in and prepare to be swept off your feet as Bruwer-Holloway tackles subjects often muffled by societal discomfort—farm murders, religious zealotry, the deep-rooted connections of the Afrikaner people to their land, and the poignant realities of aging and death. A Kind of Cousin promises a literary escapade that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.

A Jigsaw Life

A Jigsaw Life is a series of short stories that are set in the deep South surrounding a woman named Violet, a mother who suffers from bipolar episodes and severe depression. Lilly, the oldest daughter, will use her beauty and charm to maneuver through a small Georgia town but this ultimately sets her up for tragedy in the end. Meanwhile, the youngest girl in the family, named Jane, must work her way out of the heavy cobwebs of dysfunction. As a further matter, Violet and Jane are left struggling to overcome these hardships in order to prosper or grow.

This is a collection of short southern stories that deal with flawed, and profound relationships, from the beginning with Jane, the child who must use her strength and creative energy to endure life with an unstable mother, and later she must learn to rise above her own father’s addiction. In other stories, as Jane grows into adulthood her romantic relationships are tested when boundaries are crossed and broken once more, wreaking havoc on the weak.

Will she rise or will she fall? Can Jane pick up the jigsaw pieces of a shattered life and find her way back home again?

(L.O.V.E) Lost over the Virtual Expanse

Within this collection of short stories by M.D. Butler are eight tales of horror, suspense, and mystery.

An inventor goes beyond the boundaries of morality and science to bring back the woman he loves, but each reiteration just seems to take her farther away from him. Does he even know what he’s truly searching for anymore?

A late-night pit stop in a diner of death leads one man to question his resolve of finding a better life.

As a merchant ship sets sail across the open waters, there might be someone among them with a thirst for more than delectable wines.

This and much more awaits you in (L.O.V.E) Lost Over the Virtual Expanse. Be prepared when curling up with this book before bedtime, as not even the covers can prevent you from getting chills.