The Heartbreak Adventure

The journey of divorce is not an easy one, but usually a necessary one. A profound journey that forces you to look deep within and be truthful and raw in order to be reborn. Avoiding truths, ignoring signs, and suppressing gut instinct will rarely result in finding the path to your authentic self. I quieted my own soul for a very long time until my whole world came crashing down and I could no longer ignore what had been right in front of me all along. The journey was heart-breaking, yet healing, debilitating, yet empowering. I felt deep despair and deep relief all at the same time. My mind, heart, and soul were forced to walk through intense pain. Yet through it all, I also experienced intense joy and soul healing moments. This anthology of poems is about my own Heartbreak Adventure and all the feelings that accompanied me along the way.

The Honeybee Rivals the Spring

The Honeybee Rivals the Spring is a poignant collection of poetry that invites you, the reader, on a transformative journey alongside the author. As you traverse the pages, you’ll find your perspective broadening, compelling you to delve into the depths of your own thoughts and emotions. This compilation serves as a supportive companion, empowering you to connect deeply with the vivid portrayals of self-discovery and personal insight. Through its verses, you’re encouraged to embrace a journey of understanding, reflecting on your innermost sentiments and experiences.

The House Where Dirt Grew

In a town where secrets are kept hidden no matter the cost, elderly widow Mae Reese discovers that her house seems to be growing “dirt.” No matter how hard she scrubs, scours, mops, and cleans, the “dirt” is everywhere, consuming her once immaculate home. Over time, she begins to see the connection between this mysterious onslaught of filth, and the long-ago murder of teenager Betsy Palmer, and learns that even the dead can exact revenge.

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 Last Ones

In the chilling depths of The Last Ones, six individuals, burdened with a sinister curse since birth, find themselves entangled in a malevolent game of life and death. Trapped in a twisted labyrinth of deadly challenges, their survival hinges on one crucial element: love.

As the enigmatic puzzle of their cursed existence unfolds, the bonds they forge become their only hope. In a race against time, they must navigate treacherous trials where victory guarantees life, while defeat offers no escape but a gruesome demise.

Together, they must unravel the dark mysteries behind their individual curses, discovering the hidden connections that bind them and the shared secrets that hold the key to their salvation.

Can love becomes the ultimate weapon against the insidious forces which seek to claim their souls?

The Last True Blonde

Every summer, hordes of Ernest Hemingway lookalikes swarm Key West to compete on Papa’s birthday.

This summer, one of them is a killer.

When a vacationing family discovers the headless corpse of a Key West party girl, the case falls to Monroe County homicide detective Jack Dodge. A third-generation conch and Key West native, Dodge has been on an extended lost weekend aboard his dilapidated houseboat the Jackie Oh! since his lover was brutally slain in a botched drug bust. He’s the best there is, but these days the only dead body Dodge wants any part of is his own.

As the body count climbs, nervous merchants pressure Dodge’s cocky young Key West Police Department counterpart Rick Michaels to hastily solve the case in the press before the big-money weekend slips through their fingers. Everyone’s happy with Rick’s quick fix except Dodge, whose conch instincts lead him to the mysterious Wilde sisters and their exotic discotheque where anything goes… even murder.

The Last True Blonde takes you inside the exotic world of after-hours Key West, where quick-money schemes, rum-soaked ambition and insatiable sexual hungers combine for an explosive 110-proof mystery.

The Longest Road

This autobiography depicted in a collection of poetry and non-fiction, is about love and pain beyond one’s own comprehension. It is about waiting for God, and the quiet moments after prayer. It is prayer. This book searches the soul of the author as she longs and questions the mysteries of loving another person, of loss, and a reality that lacks understanding. This is her pain speaking to her in images that sometimes seem as if it is resting in another dimension, because these words wouldn’t be what they are if the pain and longing were easily comprehensible. Discover all that the author has discovered in these words written over the course of seven years.

The Loura Lure

Dr. Shamus Bergin lands a coveted position of Staff Psychologist in the Secure Treatment Unit of a mental hospital right out of school. He is soon vexed by an amnesiac patient who defies clinical diagnosis and whom every other doctor has written off. Inconsistencies about the man’s origins intersect with Shamus’s own doubts that the patient even belongs in an institution.

As his own investigation continues to be met with redacted files and evasion from governmental agencies, the doctor-patient relationship suddenly undergoes a radical shift. The patient discloses that he has time travelled from a forgotten Age of Loura to seek help from modern day members of The Sacred Order of Keepers to find the last living angel. Only the angel can turn the tide in the ultimate struggle between good and evil in this deliberately erased timeline 20,000 years in the past. With his parents tragically lost in a boating accident a decade earlier, Shamus must turn to his one true friend, Dr. John Browse, to make sense of the voices within which are calling him to action.

With career and grip on sanity at stake, Shamus must decide whether he has succumbed to the delusions of a sick mind or whether he should take a leap of faith and help the man achieve his mission.

The Messengers

After numerous negotiations the Indigenous still remained scattered throughout the wilds of Northern Ontario, Canada. In spite of treacherously cold conditions, they remained steadfast to the land, refusing to give up their lifestyle while trying to survive from Mother Nature’s unpredictable temperament. Captain Jesse Burn’s illegitimate son was among them. Father and son, a pair of strong-willed rival enemies, co-existed in a strange and deadly kinship while getting caught up in a changing way of life that neither would accept.

It was during November 1898. when Jesse had received his orders as a dedicated, respected officer in the Armed Forces. He had a job to fulfill regardless of the number of lives lost during the process. After Colonel McEwan shook Jesse’s hand and walked out, Jesse stared at the closed door for a long time. He glanced at the document containing the list of names he was to apprehend, knowing that most of those men would rather die in battle than be taken alive. Jesse scanned further down the list and suddenly froze. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey hidden near the back. After many swallows, he leaned back in his chair; his eyes were pools of liquid blue. His son’s name was on that list. 

The Missing Duke

Twin Delbert, the second-born, covets being Duke, and Lady Eudora wants to be his Duchess. Together, they arrange to have the Duke and firstborn killed. The Duke is killed, but greedy thugs keep Derrick alive to sell to Captain Zuber. Lying in blood, Derrick hears his brother and lady pay off thugs. After being thrown on the filthy shark tooth deck, he never tells his title and names himself Wolf, determined to survive to return and have his revenge. He survives brutality and torture, and two years later he escapes and returns to England.

The Mysterious Affair at the Met

A favorite destination—even for New Yorkers—is the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art. On this particular day, “the Met,” as generally known, experiences an unusually large number of visitors. Visitors have their choice of viewing over two million works of art spanning five millennia of cultures worldwide. But some among them are up to something more sinister.

At one point, the Met’s surveillance cameras’ lenses capture “a mysterious-looking couple” amid the many visitors strolling about the many galleries. The pair is dripping wet in their matching taupe Burberry trench coats. Just as the two of them walk past Soleil dans le Ciel de Saint-Paul, a masterpiece of Marc Chagall, a large tourist group—who, oddly enough, all are wearing distinctive red-and-white-striped vinyl raincoats—converges around them. But it is what happens next that baffles the museum’s surveillance crew. After “the mysterious-looking couple” pulls off their prank, they and the large tourist group walk out of that particular camera’s range, becoming submerged elsewhere in the interminable galleries of the gigantic museum.

But when a docent notices “something strange” with Chagall’s Soleil dans le Ciel de Saint-Paul, in short order, the museum-goers inside the Chagall gallery hear “High Alert!” and watch in horror as a heavy metal grille drops down from the ceiling to the floor, effectively locking them inside the gallery.

And thus began what later came to be called The Mysterious Affair at the Met.

The Netsuke from San Francisco

The stories of Vladimir Torchilin, representing the irrationality and phantasmagorical nature of everyday life both in Russia and in America, reveal the difficult world of the people of our time. The writer's gaze sharply notices the details - sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. Written in a lively, fascinating, and often ironic way, these stories are easy to read and at the same time make you think.