The Authors Show

How did the good Sunday school teacher find herself behind bars? she didn't always have a propensity towards violence. Yes, she audacious and stubborn and sometimes naughty. But MURDER? Anyone could be driven to the unimaginable.

Relatable true stories leap from the pages of this humorous award-winning memoir.

Leave ordinary at the door. Buckle up. We're going for a joy ride! When Life is messy and the soul is thirsty, the unexpected happens.

This is not for the religious minded. No, if that's you, put the book down and step away.

Its 1775 and the American Revolution has begun. In England, the Royal Navy has one eye on the rebellious colonials and the other on its traditional enemy, the French. Two teenagers - Jaco Jacinto from Charleston, SC and Darren Smythe from Gosport, England – become midshipmen in their respective navies. Jacinto wants to help his countrymen win their freedom. Smythe wanted to be a naval officer since he was a boy. From blockaded harbors in the cold waters off Nova Scotia and Scotland to the Bahama Islands, they serve with great leaders and bad ones through battles and politics as the two young men learn important lessons in the school of naval hard knocks. Jacinto and Smythe are mortal enemies but when they meet, they become friends and know later, they will again be enemies determined to do their duty.

Written by author Sharon Fallon Shreve, "Ponderings: A Collection of 144 Illumined Reflections" is more than a collection of quotes and affirmations. It was purposefully designed to be a spiritual companion to help navigate the labyrinth of our human soul. Whether you’re seeking comfort during difficult challenges, looking for a spark of creative joy to begin your morning, or simply searching for spiritual guidance for your earth’s journey, you will find it within these uplifting pages. Organized into soul nourishing chapters like Gifts from Spirit, Feelings, Sensational Seasons and Inner Guidance, this book covers the full spectrum of the human experience.

The brain is a stereo organ. The psychologies of the systems that operate the two hemisphere complement one another, making them vastly different in most respects. The stereo brain’s contribution to our lives is unparalleled in importance. It processes the information that feeds our perception. Yet, most people know almost nothing about hemispheric differences and their impact on thought and behavior.

Now add genetic dominance to this situation. The brain’s aggressive masculine left hemisphere and its values and ideas too often dominate in culture and suppress the feminine hemisphere's holistic values and ideas. This has led to a great imbalance in the cultural mindset that is sparking personal and cultural conflict and anger, and polarizing us. If we are to reverse polarization, we need to understand the psychology of the two systems that are processing our information and dividing us.

My book explains how we can access both sides of the brain and achieve whole-brain thinking.

Ashley Hall, a rich preppie from Connecticut works as a book editor at the world's craziest publishing company. Bored and fed up with everything and everyone--especially the sexist moron to whom she is engaged--she's receptive to a mysterious late-night phone call that invites her to live dangerously for a radical cause. Pursued by an oversexed commune, a bespangled lesbian weightlifter, a mysterious Jamaican, and some very nice guerrillas, Ashley is in for more change than she bargained for. One thing leads to another, and all hell--as well as hysterically outrageous comedy!--breaks out. This novel is as funny as it gets, because it's deadly serious about what's wrong with the upper class and conventional mindsets. It's comedy as protest!

One secret. Two lives forever changed.

Stephanie grew up cherished and surrounded by love, yet she was haunted by questions no one would answer. Her brother Carmine, in contrast, lived a life marked by tumult, loss, and an unrelenting search for belonging. Though born less than a year apart, these two siblings lived as strangers, each walking their own path and unaware of the other’s existence. Then, with one phone call, a long-hidden truth came crashing into the light, shattering decades of silence and binding them together in an instant.

What the Heart Carries traces their breathtaking discovery, the joy of meeting one another, and the devastating tragedy that followed. It is both a portrait of loss and a testament to what can be found, even in life’s darkest moments. At once a story of grief and of redemption, it asks: How do we begin to heal when everything we know is torn apart?

Yoga teacher Ren Devlin’s life is forever changed after his practices with yoga and meditation awaken him to find what was once thought to be impossible in the physical world—possible. He performs what the world proclaims to be a ‘miracle’ in front of hundreds of shocked onlookers. Lauded as a spiritual healer, Ren is thrust into the limelight.

Amidst the chaos, Ren seeks answers through his dreams and even deeper states of meditation, where he encounters his “council”—the gods and goddesses of the zodiac. This astrological council steers Ren down a path to work through the kleshas of yoga—the five mental afflictions, we all encounter, which are responsible for suffering.

Awakening the Mystic is an imaginative combination of philosophies and ideologies across numerous religions and cultures, as well as an exploration of higher consciousness, the practice of yoga and meditation, and a journey to discover what love and healing really means.

At Halloween, in 1998, the Sicilian-American neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn is shaken when a neighbor’s corpse is found disguised as a holiday witch on her balcony. A neurodivergent handyman with traumatic brain injury from a childhood accident, his gay and closeted older brother housemate, and their young adult rookie detective nephew become involved in the ensuing investigation. All three grapple with the current crisis, as well as their own secret traumatic histories. Issues of social convention and justice, family and professional loyalties, and personal recovery and growth are explored. Can adults recover from old trauma and resume their emotional growth?

The stories deal with a wide array of difficult situations: heroin addiction, being gay in a straight culture, being burned in a flash fire, having ADHD, arriving in the U.S. from a refugee camp, having strong suicidal impulses, being the recipient of domestic violence, experiencing the death of one’s infant son, and many more. They are grouped into four sections: death, family, hurdles, and transitions, which represent the four major themes of the book.

Each story describes the difficult situation in detail and the process by which it was overcome.

Each story contains drama, some of it intense. How will Jenni escape from the empty truck in which she is locked (Escaping My Heroin Addiction)? What will Ellen find when she opens the door to the apartment in which she and her husband live (Found Dead)? Will Bobby ever admit to himself that he is gay (Growing Up Gay)?

In 1934 St. Louis, Missouri, Pamela, outwardly a young, white socialite (but inwardly an unsettled late adolescent), is about to give birth to her first child. To assist in the delivery, she searches for the ‘colored’ midwife, Miss Minnie, who attended her own birth in 1911. Her and her husband’s families vehemently protest. During the final months of her pregnancy, her husband, Frank, even brings in relatives to closely monitor Pamela’s behavior and whereabouts. Deviously, Pamela sidesteps them by secretly pressuring her ‘colored’ maid to help her. What kind of calamity and racial tension will their search dredge up? Could the outcome be murder?