The horrors of World War II shocked the world. Americans believed it could never happen here in our own borders…until it did.
Ichiro Hisakawa and his family were part of the American culture – living the American Dream – until February 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that branded them “the others.” Taken from their homes and stripped of their citizenship due
to their ancestry, they endured deplorable conditions in the “relocation camps.” Typhus ran rampant through the camp, and riots were a daily occurrence. And for the first time, America was scornful. Life was difficult and the Hisakawa family did their best to endure it all.
However, 16-year-old Ichiro wasn’t prepared for the betrayal, murder, and escape that was waiting for him. And how did Bobby King, a sixteen-year-old from 2017, find himself in 1942 and friend to Ichiro?
Read The Two Terrors of Tulelake, a story based upon historical facts that many Americans today are unaware of.
WM Gunn is a native Texan who spent many years in the pharmaceutical industry in sales, sales management, and training and development. He is active in writing groups and volunteering with non-profit groups. He lives in his hometown in Texas with his high school sweetheart and bride of many years.
To date, he has written dozens of
short stories, novellas, and novels. Holmes, Moriarty, and the Monkeys and Chasing the Sun are two novellas released earlier in 2024. Visit his website wm-gunn.com.
When you think of a marine environment, what do you picture? Wetlands,
possibly; coastal shores, perhaps. When you think of a shrimp farm, what do
you picture? Some folks who know a thing or two a
bout aquaculture might
say any marine or freshwater environment will do.
Bart Reid, one of the founders of the Permian Sea Shrimp company, is
here to tell you otherwise. Shrimping West Texas is
the story of
that business and the history of the harebrained notion that farming shrimp
is possible in the West Texas desert.
Spanning twenty years of successes and failures, Reid captures the
quintessential West Texas entrepreneurial spirit, tallies the unique
environmental factors that made this possible, and depicts the motley crew
of business folks, scientists, and schemers who were part of the tale.
Bart Reid is a marine biologist with a master’s degree from Texas
A&M. He has been in the aquaculture (fish farming) business for over 30
years. After many years of farming shrimp in west Texas he now farms algae
for Omega 3 supplements and bioplastics. He also owns Bart’s Bay Armor, a
fishing appareland wading boot company based out of Port Mansfield,
Texas, where he fishes on the Laguna Madre.
THE NINE LIVES OF TITO D’AMELIABy Ettore Farrattini Pojani
Italian Literature / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Bayou City Press
Pages: 326
Publication Date: October 11, 2024
SYNOPSIS
This is the first (and only) English-language version of the award-winning Italian novel, The Nine Lives of Tito d’Amelia. Nine Lives is a love story about a cat, a family, and an Italian town. Mixing fiction with fact, Nine Lives tells the story of the town of Amelia, Italy, throughout the 32 centuries of its history. In fact, Amelia is considered the first organized city of central Italy, being four centuries older than Rome. The author uses the multiple lives of a cat named Tito as the way to span the centuries.
Author Ettore Farrattini Pojani is the heir of the Farrattini dynasty, a centuries-old family in Umbria whose family palazzo is in Amelia, north of Rome. Tito’s first life occurs in pre-historic Umbria, and his ninth is in the future. Tito’s mission through all nine of his lives is to help the town and the family to succeed.
A changing cast of characters traces the Farrattini line through the centuries, with Tito joining up with a Farrattini in each generation. Using his feline wiles, Tito bends humans to his will, helping them through many challenges from drought to wars to lovelorn marriages to selfish politicization of joint crises.
In this highly imaginative novel, the author mixes fictional lives with non-fictional information about historical figures as well as the Farrattini family and the town of Amelia. Readers are left wondering about details, such as what is fiction and what is fact. The last chapter will evoke surprise, though a clue that the surprise is coming is contained in the very first chapter. Originally published in Italy in 2022, this first English-language translation is published by Bayou City Press in Houston, Texas, and includes additional drawings, maps, lists of characters, a listing of foreign words and special terms, and notes on sources.
Ettore Farrattini Pojani is the heir of the noble Italian Farrattini dynasty, whose family palazzo is in Amelia, Italy, north of Rome. A music expert and critic, Ettore has published extensively on music topics and currently is a collaborator on the website Broadwayworld.com.
This, his second book, was published in Italy in 2022 and has won numerous awards. Prior to focusing on writing, Ettore studied art restoration and specialized in furniture restoration. For almost 20 years he had a workshop in Rome in which hundreds of valuable, unique pieces were brought back to their splendor thanks to his dedication and expertise. In 2001 he transformed the family palazzo into a hotel de charme, which he personally ran for 15 years until it was damaged by the 2016 earthquake.
A dedicated traveler, Ettore is fluent in French and English besides his native Italian.
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off.
A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane’s time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author’s failed relationship with her mother, and her parents’ failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.
The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era’s conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get “MRS” degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest “If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!” at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women’s traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.
Praise for The Pink Dress:
The memoir is an engaging time capsule of trendsetting southwestern beauty pageantry. A revealing look behind the glamour and illusion of beauty queens. ~Kirkus Reviews
The Pink Dress isn’t a beautiful walk down memory lane. It’s a wild ride through the turbulent 1970s, West Texas style. Here she is, Janie Botkin, taking the town by storm. —Johnny D. Boggs, nine-time Spur Award winner and author of upcoming books Longhorns East and Bloody Newton
National award–winning author Jane Little Botkin melds personal narratives of American families, often with compelling stories of western women. A member of Western Writers of America since 2017, Jane judges entries for the WWA’s prestigious Spur Award, reviews new releases, and writes articles for various magazines. Her books have won numerous awards, including two Spur Awards, two Caroline Bancroft History Prizes, and the Barbara Sudler Award; she has also been a finalist for the Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Award, High Plains Book Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and Foreword Review and Sarton Book awards, both in women’s studies. She is currently working on a biography of Mary Ann (Molly) Goodnight titled The Breath of a Buffalo, A Biography of Mary Ann Goodnight. A lifelong Texan, Jane said she had no idea Texas grew native trees until she moved from El Paso, to Dripping Springs near Austin! Now Jane blissfully escapes into her literary world in the remote White Mountain Wilderness near Nogal, New Mexico–a hop, skip, and a jump to El Paso.
Rumor has it that Texas just got a little hotter! Fans of Tessa Bailey and K. Bromberg will fall for this sexy story of mistaken identity, electric attraction, and irresistible romance in the first installment of the addictive new series, Austin Heat.
Jake is desperate to rewrite his past with women and leave behind the media storm surrounding his off-the-field antics that cloud his potential. He’s done with the stream of models, actresses, and NFL cheerleaders that have warmed his bed since he made a name for himself as starting quarterback for the University of Texas. He desperately wants to meet a normal girl in his hometown of Austin.
After moving to Austin to be the hired girlfriend of one of her long-term escort clients, Rakell finds herself wishing she could live a normal life with an average guy. Turned off by the billionaire clients she’s been serving for the last five years, she longs to get out of the business and build a life where she doesn’t live in the shadows of her escort persona.
Their worlds collide and the spice is off the charts. “Pretty boy” Jake Skyler has met his match with saucy-mouthed, Rakell McCarthy. Both think they’ve fallen for an average person. Both are wrong! What happens when their physical connection explodes, their hearts take charge and the secrets they are concealing are revealed?
Amari Nylix (alter ego to author Tara Delaney) tells sordid stories revolving around tempestuous love affairs that are inspired by the secret liaisons of Old West villains, heroes, and the temptress women who lure those powerful men into their webs. Amari delights in sharing her torrid stories of heart-wrenching, epic love that begin with the desires of the flesh and evolve into affairs of the heart.
In the Austin Heatseries, Amari works closely with bestselling author of both non-fiction and fiction, Tara Delaney 😉. Tara has been a pediatric occupational therapist for more than thirty years and has extensive professional experience in sensory processing and nervous system development, while also having studied how early trauma impacts our responses as adults. Tara is responsible for trimming back Amari’s numerous spicy scenes, allowing room for all the FEELS.
Award-winning author James Wade blends atmospheric prose with soul-stirring themes in Hollow Out the Dark, a gothic adventure set against a Depression-era landscape where a whiskey war threatens to decimate a small Texas town.
A veteran of the Great War, Jesse Cole is grateful for the quiet life he now leads. But when his closest friend runs afoul of local criminals Frog and Squirrel Fenley, Jesse is forced to spin his moral compass and enter a violent and volatile underworld. There he encounters corrupt lawmen, hired assassins, and a dark family secret that will upend all he once knew.
Complicating matters are Texas Ranger Amon Atkins—who arrives to investigate the Fenleys just as their empire is threatened by a deadly new competitor—and the green-eyed, raven-haired Adaline, a love Jesse thought he’d lost forever.
With resources scarce and winter falling hard on the town, a desperate Jesse must choose between the law and the lawless and find a way to survive while still protecting the people he loves.
A heart-pounding tale full of plot-twisting revelations, Hollow Out the Dark brings readers into a whiskey-fueled world where everyone has a secret, and love everlasting balances on the edge of a knife.
James Wade is the award-winning author of Beasts of the Earth, All Things Left Wild, and River, Sing Out. He is the youngest novelist to win two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and the recipient of the MPIBA’s prestigious Reading the West Award. James’s work has appeared in Southern Literary Magazine, the Bitter Oleander, Writers’ Digest, and numerous additional publications. James lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and children.
The Duchess of Kokora, Phera Ylir Mdana, has entered the marriage games of the neighboring kingdom of Ryene. But she’s not there to woo the dashing Prince Dominic.
Her true objective? To win back one of the other contestants, Lady Rocelle Virae—Phera’s true love and ex-fiancée.
Love proves to be a game like any other when Phera must not only mend matters with her childhood sweetheart, but conceal her true intentions in order to earn votes and stay in the competition.
And as long-brewing political tensions simmer beneath the surface, the playful veneer of the competition begins to crack. In the end, Phera, Dominic, and Rocelle find themselves united in a desperate bid to prevent a duel that threatens the integrity of the kingdom, the stability of the continent, and any hope for a happily ever after.
From playing the DM in Dungeons and Dragons to writing fantasy novels, Nikhil Prabala loves storytelling, delighting in fantasy fiction from the epic to the cozy and everywhere in between. TheDuchess of Kokora is his first published novel.
Born and raised in Austin, Texas, he graduated from Stanford in 2019 and is currently based in the Bay Area. In his free time he enjoys ballroom dancing, singing, playing the guitar, tabletop games, and spending time with friends and family.
Morningwood is back with big plans to create a death tourism industry. Working with his old Metaphysics professor from Texas Alchemical and Metaphysical University, he delves the purgatorial realms gathering data for his venture. Standing in their way is university president T. Smedley Stalwart and his band of religious zealots – the Ancient and Loyal Order of the Holy Armadillo. FBI agents Flockham and Morales return to infiltrate and monitor ALOHA.
With the help of brilliant metaphysical engineer Yong Mi Hernandez, safety inspector Conrad Dopplebock, and guided by the wisdom of Cotton Widdershins, the Deus Tex Machina is a success. Sort of.
Rob Witherspoon was born and raised in rural Texas. He earned a BA in Physical Education, UT Arlington 1985 and a BS in Aerospace Engineering, UT Arlington 1990. He lives in north central Texas with his wife and youngest daughter and has spent much of his life in rural communities and on the ranch.
Felicity Koerber is finally getting her life together. She has a fiancé, her bean to bar chocolate shop on Galveston’s historic Strand has become a gathering spot for the community, and she is ready to embrace whatever the future holds. She’s ready for another launch party – despite the disaster at her grand opening, when she’d first gotten involved with solving a murder. And this time she’s embracing her status as a sleuth. She’s hosting a murder mystery weekend to celebrate the new Mystery Flavor line of craft chocolate bars. She’s held a contest to choose the attendees, who will all stay at her aunt’s flip hotel and enjoy the island. It’s all supposed to be perfectly random – only, Felicity starts to uncover connections between her guests. When one of them winds up murdered, Felicity has to keep her aunt from becoming the main suspect.
The killer is very clearly calling Felicity out, leaving clues that mean little to anyone other than her. But that doesn’t narrow down the suspect pool. Her guests are there because they love the true crime podcast she’s been featured on. And she can’t decide whether the killer wants her to catch them – or just wants to taunt her.
Meanwhile, Felicity is also playing host to her future in-laws and discovers that her fiancé’s sister, who is also a cop, is very competitive. Can Felicity hold her own and make a good impression, while keeping her business together and her aunt out of jail? And can Felicity solve it in time to protect the people she cares about from becoming additional victims?
Satchmo the retired police dog turned therapy dog returns to help her sniff out a few clues, and one of the guests brings along a ferret named Cheeseburger, who keeps showing up in the most unexpected places.
Top Ten list for A CHOCOLATE IS ANNOUNCED by Amber Royer
In my newest Bean to Bar Mystery, A Chocolate is Announced, my protagonist Felicity hosts a murder mystery weekend at the hotel her aunt is in the process of flipping. Of course, everything goes horribly wrong.
Mystery weekends are something between a party, a play and a game. There are so many moving parts, it would be easy for something to go wrong. And in a book, it’s best if everything goes wrong. So what are my top ten ways to ruin a mystery weekend?
10. Show up early and ask lots of questions to the folks trying to get everything set up. This is sure to put them in a bad mood when dealing with the guests that arrive on time. This happens to Felicity – before she’s even had her coffee.
9. Bring a pet, without asking permission. Everyone is bound to love your little snookums, right? Nobody will be allergic to or frightened of your pet, right? Well . . . not always.
8. Bring your laptop and phone. You can spend your down time working on something else. That won’t annoy anyone at all, even if you don’t really engage with what’s going on.
7. Show up drunk. It’s bound to be 5 o’clock somewhere. Especially in a beach town like Galveston, where my Bean to Bar stories are set.
6. Take pictures and video of everything, without permission, even during parts of the event that are clearly scripted, and post it immediately. (Felicity has to set ground rules about this one.)
5. Criticize the food. Imply that it’s unappetizing and unsafe. Even if someone winds up being poisoned on sight, you shouldn’t just blame the buffet. So go ahead and make everybody paranoid.
4. Steal things. Nothing will turn people against each other like making them suspect that someone is a thief.
3. Invite extra people. Or even better, manipulate the guest list so that you replace the people who should have been invited with people who know and dislike each other.
2. Make it impossible for everybody to leave. Otherwise, how can they be fully annoyed by all the steps you’ve taken to ruin the fun.
1. Commit an actual murder. This is sure to overshadow whatever lame mystery was scripted for the weekend. Congratulations! You have become a genuine villain. Look forward to being caught by a LARPer or armchair detective.
Of course, not all of these steps are likely to be committed by the same person. Which leaves Felicity with a large pool of suspects, and a lot to deal with as she sifts through the clues. It was a fun book to write. I hope you enjoy the read!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series, and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach.
Amber and her husband live in the DFW Area, where you can often find them hiking or taking landscape, architecture, and wildlife photographs.
If you are very nice to Amber, she might make you cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes, of course! Amber blogs about creative writing technique and all things chocolate at http://www.amberroyer.com.
Children’s Horror / Fantasy / Magic / Chapter Book
Publisher: Progressive Rising Phoenix Press
Page Count: 246
Publication Date: January 9, 2024
SYNOPSIS
Stewart sees a ghostly figure out of the corner of his eye. He and his friend, Andy, begin a ghost investigation that leads to an adventure of a lifetime. Coming face-to-face with a ghost, the boys make a decision to join forces with a group of girls, who have encountered a ghost of their own. The kids soon find that the ghosts that they’ve encountered are in imminent danger and need their help. Can the kids devise a plan to help the ghost in time? Will they be able to reunite a ghost with his lost family? Complete with a ghost village and a feud, this story takes on a life of its own.
Award-winning author Amanda M. Thrasher was born in England and moved to Texas, where she lives with her family. She writes YA, general fiction, middle grade, early reader chapter, and picture books. She is the founder and CEO of Progressive Rising Phoenix Press.
The Page Unbound 