Golden Ratio: Accounts

With the cat well and truly out of the bag, Lia has agreed to stay in The Republic Mirabeaux to help her one-time captors come to terms with the situation and learn to use their new abilities.

They have a lot to learn, and with great power come great homework, apparently.

None of them can foresee the challenges ahead of them, or guess what they may become, but they have far less time than any of them realize.

Gone But Not Betrayed

Gone But Not Betrayed caps the epic ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ trilogy, chronicling three intertwined families across the breathtaking upheavals of the 20th century’s second half.

Picking up in 1945’s ashes, this majestic saga ushers us into the postwar hope, tragedy, and turbulence that reinvented the modern world order. As the Champions, Wagners and Sterns journey from the Holocaust’s horrors to Israel’s birth, through Hollywood’s Golden Age, Vietnam turmoil and beyond, Hans Wagner quietly amasses an empire in America’s corridors of power. But shadowy forces conspire to imperil everything he holds dear.

At the story’s heart are identical twins Veda and Rose, whose paths diverge into legend after the war. While Veda’s dynasty embodies the glittering pinnacle of American success, Rose’s quiet courage leaves an indelible impact from Auschwitz to Israel’s Six Day War. Though oceans apart, each sister’s light has transformed innumerable lives. Despite the riches and fame fortune brings them, this indestructible bond remains unchanged.

Spanning the nostalgic charm of postwar suburbia to the encroaching millennium’s anxious technologies, Gone But Not Betrayed fuses intimate personal dramas with the pivotal events reshaping global civilization. As new generations inherit unresolved darkness and light, every hard-won revelation immerses us deeply into the unbroken chain linking past to future.

Gone but Not Forgotten

Gone but Not Forgotten is the first of a historical fiction trilogy set in America and Europe from 1914 to 1918. It chronicles the tale of the Gilded Age of pageantry through the end of the Great War. It is the story of the Champions, the Wagners and the Sterns, an epical saga of their lives, trials, and tribulations. The story opens at an outdoor wedding in fashionable Newport, Rhode Island. The heroines are beautiful twin sisters, Veda and Rose Champion. Veda is the spoiled American debutante with an iron will. Rose is the gentler beauty and is passively strong.

Hans Wagner, the male protagonist, is a German immigrant who comes to America with the quest to live his dream. His best Jewish friend, Rudolph Stern, also arrives from Germany to study medicine. The toils of the Great War halt the hopes of both while ushering in a series of tragedies for the Champion family, including the sinking of the Lusitania, the death of the twins’ brother, Marius Champion, on the battlefields of France, and the vicious murder of their grandparents in Verdon.

The novel will be followed by two others, spanning 1918–2000. The trilogy is a portrait of the most significant events in the twentieth century.

Gone but Not Forsaken

Gone but Not Forsaken is the second of a historical fiction trilogy set in America and Europe from 1918-1945. It chronicles post World War I through the end of World War II. In America, it portrays initial abundance, including modern industrialism, where Gilded Age mansions were replaced by soaring skyscrapers through the roaring twenties into the stock market crash and Great Depression. It parallels the birth of Hollywood glitz amidst the storm of the country's depravation, carried through the bombing of Pearl Harbor and World War II. In Europe, it chronicles the birth of Nazism, the Holocaust, and the rise and fall of the Third Reich. American victory is heralded in the end once again. The novel continues to chronicle the stories of the Champions, the Wagners and the Sterns, along with the intertwining of their lives. It will be followed by book three of the trilogy, spanning 1945-2000.

Goodwood

Some towns feel impossible to escape. They have a way of wearing folks down, sucking dry their ambition. It’s like they’re cursed.

Goodwood is such a place. But Toby and the guys are different. Ever since that night in the woods when they were fourteen. The night they visited the old Blood Tree, their futures brightened.

Now, over a decade later, Toby spends his bachelor party back in his hometown. From greener pastures, he and his friends return. But a deeply rooted curse has long awaited their arrival. These boys, who somehow managed to escape all those years ago.

Dead-end towns like Goodwood aren’t meant to be escaped. And curses are rarely eluded.

Government Girls

It’s 1942, and best friends Mary and Marge leave their teaching jobs behind in Iowa to move to Washington D.C. to work for the FBI. Excited yet apprehensive, neither of them could anticipate the rapid changes the war will bring into their lives.

Arriving at Union Station, they meet Dotty, a quick-witted woman who left her all-girl band in New York City in search of new opportunities. Despite rampant racism, Dotty manages to find a clerical job with the government, thanks to her prized possession - a typewriter.

The three women band together, renting rooms in a run-down mansion that operates as a restaurant and boarding house. Under the same roof lives Natalie, an eccentric artist trying desperately to sell her screenplays and achieve her Hollywood dreams.

As Mary and Marge begin their demanding fingerprint filing jobs at the FBI, they find themselves growing increasingly vulnerable, but also courageous, in the face of a world ruptured by war. The four women couldn’t be more different, yet they forge an unbreakable bond confronting rapidly shifting social conventions and opportunities for women.

Grace in Place of Grace

This volume of simple, unpretentious poetry will hopefully direct the reader to an understanding of the marvellous and abundant grace that Jesus Christ has to offer every human being. By combining Biblical verses with the author’s thoughts, the poems shall perhaps navigate men’s hearts to an awareness of the rich mercy that Jesus wants to share with all people.

When humans have thoughts surmising Christ, what may they ask themselves? How do I get to know the Saviour of mankind? What does a life lived for Christ entail? Are there aspects of my life that I need to change? How can I have a heartfelt relationship with God’s Son?

The poems in this book shall assist you in finding what Christ wants to do in your life and what He has already done. The titles may cause readers to think questions of great importance: “I Have Chosen You,” “No Longer Earthbound,” “Leap Like a Deer,” “No One Can Tell God What to Do,” “The Effectual Fervent Prayer,” “Washed with Butter,” “Inward Parts,” “The Pathways of God’s Pleasure,” etc….

“For by grace are ye saved through faith.” Ephesians 2:8a

Guardian Guerrillas

This is the fascinating story of Frank James, Jesse James older brother, as a bushwhacker in Quantrill’s Partisan Rangers during the Civil War. The actions of this brash, Shakespeare quoting young man represents the best and worst of guerrilla warfare in those turbulent and violent times.

After fighting as a Confederate soldier at Wilson’s Creek, captured and paroled, he returned home as a cocky nineteen-year-old barely staying out of jail. He joins Quantrill’s bushwhackers with escapades that are full of daring and bravery, sometimes cruelty, but also with humour.

We follow him through the many skirmishes and battles including the raids on Lawrence Kansas and Centralia Missouri and the critical events that precipitated them, the women’s prison collapse where several bushwhacker relatives were killed or injured and the infamous “General Order Number 11” that forcibly drove out all residents of an area over 2,200 square miles, twice the size of Rhode Island.

The characters in this work include soldiers, generals, politicians, crooks, thieves, farmers, bankers, lovers, wives, and sisters that suffered or caused suffering in this oft untold American history and their post bellum lives that were fraught with danger, excitement, success for some, failure for many, with ironic, karmic twists.

What drove these young men to become Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers? Were they blood thirsty cutthroats or Guardian Guerrillas?

Gullah Gravestones

Steve Riley is a realtor who sells his friend and client a large tract of land in coastal South Carolina for a pricey condo project. The old Gullah graveyard there is specifically not to be disturbed but during initial grading, it accidentally happens. The land explodes, forming a large crater, coughing out hideous, angry skeletons killing all the workers and pulling them into the doomed abyss—a fiery pit of no escape! Shocking mayhem has now come to the once peaceful sea island!

Unconcerned by the frightening supernatural event and events to come, Johnny is only upset about his ruined property and threatens Steve to get his money back. The two men become bitter enemies! Ironically, Steve’s twin daughters disappear. Filled with vengeance, Irish-tempered Steve believes Johnny kidnapped them! But did he? Out of desperation, Steve resorts to black magic in his quest to save his girls. After receiving amazing voodoo powers by an anomaly from the invisible world, will Steve find them? Can he deal with Johnny? And will the spirits rest again, under their Gullah Gravestones?  

Guns and Horses

From the Arctic tundra to the forested hills of the Klondike Plateau, this collection of Northern Short Stories hurls the reader into a maelstrom of wilderness adventure and survival. From a brutal fight to the death with the wolves and bears to the streets and saloons of scattered frontier towns slinging guns with outlaws and falling in love with beautiful women.

From the early explorers to modern times, driving dog teams of half wild huskies across the windblown wastelands and riding in the saddle with a Winchester under one leg, Simon Tourigny’s raw, rough characters roam the northern wilderness, hunting, hiding, fighting, and surviving in a land of rugged mountains, swift glacial rivers, and trackless forests.

Guns and Horses will take you to the razor edge of death and back again in time for tea and bannock. A blend of Jack London and Louis L’Amour with a dash of Tarantino and his own unique flair, this collection of stories will inspire you to keep going to the final, bitter end.

After all, what is life without love? While there is love there is hope, and while there is hope there is a chance...

Haikus-isms

This expansive collection features Ecila Mai’s observations on existence distilled into emotive works of poetry, prose and haiku. Drawing from diverse life experiences and poignant personal memories, these thoughtful writings invite self-reflection on both the trials and triumphs woven into the human experience.

As she delves into her rich interior landscape, Ecila’s raw ruminations examine the people, places and pivotal moments that collectively shaped her perspective. By confronting the fraught, the fanciful and even the mundane, her flowing verses illuminate the ebb and flow of life in all its dynamic complexity.

Ecila offers this diverse array of poetic pieces in hopes they will resonate with readers’ own winding paths, sparking intimate considerations about personal progression versus stagnation. Through contemplative language and keen emotional insights, Poetic Reflections serves as a stirring reminder that we each possess the power to transform our futures as we see fit – no matter the perils of the past.

Hell's Island

In the heart of Savannah, Georgia, Benjamin Farrows enjoys a life of luxury: a loving wife, an adorable daughter, and a remote island that has been in his family for generations. When a chemical company offers to purchase the island, Ben must decide whether to sell or keep the mysterious land.

Hanley Rivers, an old family friend, fills Ben’s mind with chilling tales of voodoo worshippers and demons who inhabit the island, warning him that they will stop at nothing to protect their sacred ground. Intrigued and determined to uncover the truth, Ben sets out to investigate, unaware that he is about to face a formidable foe: an evil, supernatural demon named Everette Marlowe.

As Ben delves deeper into the island’s secrets, Marlowe lures him into a deadly trap, unleashing unspeakable horror upon his family. Can Ben protect his loved ones and prevent Marlowe from guarding his evil domain, a place known as Hell’s Island, which he has secretly watched over for more than three centuries?

“Hell’s Island is filled with southern atmosphere and local folklore…a spooky horror novel that successfully blends history with demonic chills…”

– Sue Terry, Metapsychology.

“The author hooked me with the fifth sentence on page one. From then on, I had no choice but to go with the tide of words…”

– Detra Fitch, Huntress Reviews.

“William Hardy does a wonderful job of weaving a story with interesting twists and turns and then ends with all your curiosity satisfied.”

– Fiction Addiction.net

“Witchcraft, suspense, and plenty of twists and turns add up to a book that’s sure to hold the reader’s interest… William Hardy has a winner with Hell’s Island.”

– Ken Bell, The Beaufort Gazette.