iUniverse books p6

As you peruse these books, keep in mind that there are nearly 13,000 titles available at the iUniverse bookstore. The books I have selected here are those I find interesting and innovative, funky and fun, serious and compelling. I will be adding to these bookstore pages, as I make more discoveries, so check back often.

“Like Icarus, the hero of this novel flies high and has an awesome fall, but the flight engraves itself permanently on the reader’s mind and imagination.”
—Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe

Vrettos writes with intensity about his young hero's pilgrimage amid the conflicts of a Greece on the verge of war. A memorable and striking novel.
- John Updike.

Vrettos is the author of eight published books. His last, The Elgin Affair was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998. In 2000, he won the Greek Institute Award, and has received excellent reviews in America, England, and the continent of Europe.

Theodore Vrettos is the author of six books: four novels and two non-fiction. He lives in Peabody, Massachusetts. His new book, Alexandria: City of the Western Mind will be published in December, 2001 by The Free Press/Simon and Schuster.

Trapping was becoming a dying trade and not many could make it in such a harsh life. But Joshua Walker had worked these mountains and streams most of his adult life and preferred it to what was becoming the new progressive way of living. With winter coming on soon he knew the much-feared Arikara Indians would be making way to their wintering camps so he skirted their country in search of a place to set his traps and settle in for the winter himself. Just as he had begun his travels, he encountered something that bewildered him and upon closer inspection he bore witness to a grizzly scene that would alter his destiny forever.

because it just sounds intriguing.

This entertaining and emotionally passionate new novel, by this first time author, reveals the dark and sinister events that surround a Louisiana family as it struggles to overcome a voodoo curse that has tormented the love life of its beautiful women since the days just after slavery. In 1949 Elizabeth Lafayette, the family’s matriarch sets off a chain of tragic events after she tampers with an erotic fragrance the community root doctor has concocted to protect her naive daughter and granddaughter from deadly effects of the curse. Explicit and shockingly bold, Reginald Wyatt skillfully touches on the social and cultural realities that have intimately affected all of our lives.

In an astonishing, moving thriller about family bonds that reach across time, the author of Overboard and Sounding brings all his skill to a re-creation of one of history’s most thrilling episodes, the American Gold Rush.

If you were given a chance to live in another time, would you? When Maggie O'Brien atends her mother's funeral, she learns that she is not an O'Brien, but a McFarland. This set her on a journey to find her true identity. She looks to her sisters for help but they fail to yield.

A family saga of a dysfunctional family of the post-Depression era and WWII, raising an unusually beautiful boy, who escapes by joining a seminary. He journeys through the troubled halls of priesthood and the Vatican, and finds his sexual identity and life afterwards in the steamy city of New Orleans.

George Neff returned from WWII to find a world he no longer understood. His girlfriend is married, most of his friends are gone, and his folks no longer understood him. So he takes to the open road, moving with the seasons and working odd jobs, not wanting to be from anywhere or care for any body. George meets Bo while working at a job, cutting pulpwood, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. They continue to bum around the country together, until they come to the town of Warren. Warren changes their lives. Here they find people who accept them, and believe in them. Here George finds out that there are still things in life that are worth fighting for, while Bo faces his worst nightmare.

“Packing the punch of Stephen King's novella, The Body [Stand By Me], a classic of small-town life disrupted by violent death, this carefully crafted first novel is, in its turn, highly recommended.”

In the isolated Nebraska Territories, Craig Conor’s world is shattered by the murder of his parents and the disappearance of his younger brother. The search for his brother and the truth about his parents will eventually place him in greater danger as he finds himself face to face with murderous outlaws and he is caught in the middle of the first great conflict between north and south. His only hope may lie in a Texas Ranger searching for justice himself.

September 11th, 2001 marks the beginning of a world-wide war on terror. Unbeknownst to the citizens of the Western Powers, their governments are working on a modern-day Manhattan Project to create a weapon so potent, it will defeat the terrorists of the world once and for all. In an era when the very survival of liberty and the global economic system are daily threatened by weapons of mass destruction, the Western democracies ardently push the limits of the known universe to unleash a weapon of unrivaled omnipotence a self-replicating assembler. Amidst these troubled times, a god-like figure rises to power. As leader of the newly created United Europe, Raphael Vicente sets out on a bold quest to exterminate disease, eliminate poverty, and destroy the world s oppressors. The ascendance of this new breakthrough technology sets the stage for realizing his dream a world entrenched in democratic social justice for all peoples of the world. But in Raphael s world of black and white, the dream of eradicating injustice proves to be a formidable task, and in the end, man s elusive pursuit of perfection drives him to the edge of never-before imagined consequences. In a struggle to provide adequate security, while preserving liberty, quick decisions must be made, and they leave the world teetering on the brink of annihilation.

Con Ataxia was a farmboy. He knew nothing of the City except as the place of Market -- where his father sold their crops and got the finances for another season on the hardscrabble, mountain farm. He knew nothing of the Commander or the Army. He knew less about the Rebels. The Dragon and Dragon Raiders were mythical beings used by old women to make the children obey -- until the Raiders murdered his sisters and kidnapped his father on that first day of his eighteenth Market.

"One of the most powerful books I've ever read. I was literally shaken by it."

—Jim Trelease, author of the Read Aloud Handbook

Marc Talbert has written many books for young readers, several of them published in seven foreign countries. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Tesuque, New Mexico. Visit his website at www.marktalbert.com

A story of undying loyalty, betrayal, and triumph that will sweep through your soul like a night train.

A boy deeply troubled about his future. An aging drifter tormented by the past. They meet by a campfire in late summer and their lives are forever changed.

The story line of The Deep Road is a complex and subtle tale spun out in two volume, which rumbles through the last century. The Great Depression, the poison of successive wars, the culture of prosperity, turbulence, self-absorption and unbridled greed unfolds through the rich texture of the characters' lives. Their struggles and triumphs are played out against a backdrop of profound longing. At the heart of this chronicle stands a matriarch damaged by an early childhood trauma, a clairvoyant child tangled in the web of her fractious family, a self-loathing intellectual lost in the destructive politics of resistance, a black activist riddled with hopeless guilt, a disabled Vietnam Vet crippled by self-doubt, and a redheaded beauty, her fragile life slurred by drugs and alcohol. A deep-seated passion for literature and music (the monumental twins of American culture) underscores the plot in this fast-paced saga, as the characters search for an ancient antidote to the dread churned up by random and senseless evil. Love and loyalty couple to baffle the mindless disregard for individual dignity that mars modern society. An ageless epic, recast in modern times, The Deep Road tells its tale with ruthless honesty.

Frederick Van Patten lives with his family in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before writing fiction, he spent his creative currency on the theatre writing and directing for many years in the Bay Area. His plays have been produced on the West Coast. He is the author of the two-part family chronicle, The Deep Road, the mystery novel, The 13th Notebook, and Midsummer's Tale.

iUniverse, general fiction, continued... As you peruse these books, keep in mind that there are nearly 13,000 titles available at the iUniverse bookstore. The books I have selected here are those I find interesting and innovative, funky and fun, serious and compelling. I will be adding to these bookstore pages, as I make more discoveries, so check back often.			Page 2
	Birds of Winter by Theodore Vrettos ISBN 0-595-19527-X Format: Paperback Our Price: $15.95	“Like Icarus, the hero of this novel flies high and has an awesome fall, but the flight engraves itself permanently on the reader’s mind and imagination.” —Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe Vrettos writes with intensity about his young hero's pilgrimage amid the conflicts of a Greece on the verge of war. A memorable and striking novel. - John Updike. Vrettos is the author of eight published books. His last, The Elgin Affair was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998. In 2000, he won the Greek Institute Award, and has received excellent reviews in America, England, and the continent of Europe. Theodore Vrettos is the author of six books: four novels and two non-fiction. He lives in Peabody, Massachusetts. His new book, Alexandria: City of the Western Mind will be published in December, 2001 by The Free Press/Simon and Schuster.
	Bitter Root Blood by Jodi L Westendorf ISBN 0-595-15664-9 Format: Paperback Our Price: $14.95	"An epic tale of adventure in the untamed western wilderness." Trapping was becoming a dying trade and not many could make it in such a harsh life. But Joshua Walker had worked these mountains and streams most of his adult life and preferred it to what was becoming the new progressive way of living. With winter coming on soon he knew the much-feared Arikara Indians would be making way to their wintering camps so he skirted their country in search of a place to set his traps and settle in for the winter himself. Just as he had begun his travels, he encountered something that bewildered him and upon closer inspection he bore witness to a grizzly scene that would alter his destiny forever.	I chose to include this book because it just sounds intriguing.
	Bitter Roots by Reginald Lawrence Wyatt ISBN 0-595-25335-0 Paperback $26.95 Hard Cover $36.95	This entertaining and emotionally passionate new novel, by this first time author, reveals the dark and sinister events that surround a Louisiana family as it struggles to overcome a voodoo curse that has tormented the love life of its beautiful women since the days just after slavery. In 1949 Elizabeth Lafayette, the family’s matriarch sets off a chain of tragic events after she tampers with an erotic fragrance the community root doctor has concocted to protect her naive daughter and granddaughter from deadly effects of the curse. Explicit and shockingly bold, Reginald Wyatt skillfully touches on the social and cultural realities that have intimately affected all of our lives.	Oooh! A Voodoo curse!
	The Blood God by Joseph Mac Anthony ISBN 0-595-09344-2 Format: Paperback Our Price: $19.95	On a night train racing out of New York, businessman Otto Lentz nicks himself while shaving. To his horror, the wound will not close. Everything he uses is soon drenched in blood. A fatal red pool widens at his feet. Lentz had grown fat on the profits from cheap Third World blood. Now someone is using a deadly virus to turn his blood to the consistency of water. Bled white, he falls to the washroom floor, his latest scream lost in the howl of the train rushing through the night. Who unleashed the deadly virus? And who will be next? Only reporter Stephen Haggarty has the ability and the courage to find out. But even as he begins time is running out. In the rain soaked jungles of Guatemala, the killer is plotting to destroy his next victim, this time for a price. The target is the young President of the United States. Stephen Haggarty does not realise it but he has only seven days to stop the assassination. And to halt the spread of a virus that threatens to destroy humanity.
	Blood Song by Hank Searls ISBN 0-595-14440-3 Format: Paperback Our Price: $20.95	"Fast-paced, entertaining, effortless to read." —Washington Post “The sleep-spoiling thriller of the year.” —San Diego Union In an astonishing, moving thriller about family bonds that reach across time, the author of Overboard and Sounding brings all his skill to a re-creation of one of history’s most thrilling episodes, the American Gold Rush.	Hank Searls is the author of the best-selling novels Overboard, Jaws II, and The Crowded Sky
	Boomerang by Adam W Wiktorek ISBN 0-595-15926-5 Format: Paperback Our Price: $17.95	BOOMERANG is a novel that begins with two simple particulars One is 101 year old, Charlie Reiher. As an infant, Charlie had been one of the tens of thousands of children who had been "taken up," that is to say adopted, from one of the hundreds of Orphan Trains. Two is the town of Payette: sleepy - isolated - Payette, Idaho, where time seems to be listening to another clock. Payette, Idaho, is Boomerang. In Boomerang the year is 1906, Jacob Mead, (inspired by Charlie Reiher), is 18 years old. He is a boy, yet he is a man, as are most young men of that age. There was a rumor that when he traveled on the Orphan Train in 1890 he had been with two brothers and a sister. With scant clues and a cold trail, could he find them? Was there even any reason to look after 16 years? And why was a cold-blooded killer pursuing him? You'll see, you'll see indeed.	From 1854 to 1929, over 150,000 orphans were sent West for adoption aboard ORPHAN TRAINS. Not all children were justly served. A PBS presentation covered this subject. And except to those who experienced this little known life, I doubt this story is very widely known.
	A Borrowed Life by Linda K Elliott ISBN 0-595-12395-3 Format: Paperback Our Price: $12.95	If you were given a chance to live in another time, would you? When Maggie O'Brien atends her mother's funeral, she learns that she is not an O'Brien, but a McFarland. This set her on a journey to find her true identity. She looks to her sisters for help but they fail to yield. With the help of a spirit guide and an Indian named Walking Eagle, Maggie finds herself gliding through time to 1889. Returning to the present to sell her house, she sees someone not only from the 1800's, but who is allegedly dead. Her mind works overtime leading her to believe that there is a conspiracy taking place. Could she be right? Take this exciting journey with Maggie and learn how subtly someone can take over your life without your knowledge until it's too late.
	The Boy in the Mirror by Joseph A Klingman ISBN 0-595-01215-9 Format: Paperback Our Price: $10.95	A family saga of a dysfunctional family of the post-Depression era and WWII, raising an unusually beautiful boy, who escapes by joining a seminary. He journeys through the troubled halls of priesthood and the Vatican, and finds his sexual identity and life afterwards in the steamy city of New Orleans.
	Bug on a Hot Plate by Ronnie Remonda ISBN 1-58348-571-6 Format: Paperback Our Price: $8.95	George Neff returned from WWII to find a world he no longer understood. His girlfriend is married, most of his friends are gone, and his folks no longer understood him. So he takes to the open road, moving with the seasons and working odd jobs, not wanting to be from anywhere or care for any body. George meets Bo while working at a job, cutting pulpwood, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. They continue to bum around the country together, until they come to the town of Warren. Warren changes their lives. Here they find people who accept them, and believe in them. Here George finds out that there are still things in life that are worth fighting for, while Bo faces his worst nightmare.
	Clearwater Summer by John Keegan ISBN 0-595-00784-8 Format: Paperback Our Price: $18.95	John E. Keegan’s book, Clearwater Summer, is a tale about a young, teenager named Will Bradford who is introduced into the harsh adult world by the events one summer in a small Pacific Northwest town. The boy must make a decision that will change him and the town forever.	“Packing the punch of Stephen King's novella, The Body [Stand By Me], a classic of small-town life disrupted by violent death, this carefully crafted first novel is, in its turn, highly recommended.” —Library Journal
	Huh? Take a break from the ordinary and give RealBeer a try, for the best in homebrew and specialty coffees.
	Cold Eyes by Glenn McGinnis ISBN 0-595-22714-7 Format: Paperback Our Price: $14.95	A detective thriller with a twist. Three contrasting characters are thrown together as the Unsolved Case Review Division of the Tucson Police Department, known as Cold Eyes. Identical twins lead them on a trail of terror and murder. The files on a series of murders find their way to the Unsolved Case Review Division of the Tucson Police Department, better known as Cold Eyes. Charles Ewing, a brash corporal and SWAT sniper finds himself teamed with Bob Earp, an aging cynical detective. Joined by a beautiful attorney from the district attorney's office, they piece together the thread that binds the cases and leads them to two men, identical twins raised in the hill country of western Arkansas. The murderers lash back at the Cold Eyes team who follow them into the desert for the final showdown.
	Conflicts of Interest by Paul J Thomas ISBN 0-595-25373-3 Paperback $14.95 Hard Cover $24.95	Conflicts of Interest is a fast-paced journey through a troubled land on the brink of Civil War. In the isolated Nebraska Territories, Craig Conor’s world is shattered by the murder of his parents and the disappearance of his younger brother. The search for his brother and the truth about his parents will eventually place him in greater danger as he finds himself face to face with murderous outlaws and he is caught in the middle of the first great conflict between north and south. His only hope may lie in a Texas Ranger searching for justice himself.
	Conquest of Paradise: an End of Times Nano-Thriller by Britt D Gillette ISBN 0-595-26454-9 Format: Paperback Our Price: $17.95	September 11th, 2001 marks the beginning of a world-wide war on terror. Unbeknownst to the citizens of the Western Powers, their governments are working on a modern-day Manhattan Project to create a weapon so potent, it will defeat the terrorists of the world once and for all. In an era when the very survival of liberty and the global economic system are daily threatened by weapons of mass destruction, the Western democracies ardently push the limits of the known universe to unleash a weapon of unrivaled omnipotence a self-replicating assembler. Amidst these troubled times, a god-like figure rises to power. As leader of the newly created United Europe, Raphael Vicente sets out on a bold quest to exterminate disease, eliminate poverty, and destroy the world s oppressors. The ascendance of this new breakthrough technology sets the stage for realizing his dream a world entrenched in democratic social justice for all peoples of the world. But in Raphael s world of black and white, the dream of eradicating injustice proves to be a formidable task, and in the end, man s elusive pursuit of perfection drives him to the edge of never-before imagined consequences. In a struggle to provide adequate security, while preserving liberty, quick decisions must be made, and they leave the world teetering on the brink of annihilation.
	Crazy Dog Song... by Mack Mangham ISBN 0-595-25329-6 Paperback $14.95 Hard Cover $24.95	*A brooding Gothic novel of suspense that reaches beyond the grave.* Snooky, the retarded black boy, and Crazy Dog, the itinerant hound wander onto the decaying Voshaylee plantation. They witness without understanding, the love between Elizabeth and B.K. outside modern-day Atlanta, battling the power of Elizabeth's mother Maria from beyond the grave, Philip's endless love for his dead wife Maria and the bizarre love of the ever-naked young Travis and the mistress of Gavonlee, well into her eighties, as she attempts to quiet the crying imaginary child locked in her bedroom closet. Around these sick, weird but hypnotic characters revolve Bo Skooter, Miss Lucy's husband who is killed in circumstances as strange as his marriage, The Baby, Miss Lucy's daughter who found so little love as an unnamed child that she enjoys her mother's descent into dementia. Mother, Elizabeth's obese aberrant relative manipulates all. Philip seldom leaves his own rooms…and for very good reasons. Over all these twisted people hovers Maria, effecting more havoc from the grave than ever when alive—And then there is the pet snake. You may hate Crazy Dog Song but you will never forget it.
	Dark Epiphany by Paul W. Valentine ISBN 1-58348-401-9 Format: Paperback Our Price: $12.95	Dark Epiphany pits two D.C. police homicide detectives against the dark forces behind the strangulation murder of an influential congressional aide, leading the detectives through a maze of bizarre clues and encounters that end in a chase scene in a cave deep under the hills of northern Alabama. The possible suspects include a motley array of Capitol Hill wonks and bureaucrats, an upscale department store buyer, a health food faddist and a classical guitar player.	"Valentine has written a cop novel that's not only on the money with cops but also that has brains and compassion. He's written an erudite policier." Carl Schoettler, The Baltimore Evening Sun "Valentine's writing is crisp and the story moves along head over heels." Gene Williams, The Cleveland Plain Dealer "Valentine has taught his characters to speak in perfectly tuned idiom." David Bradley, The Pennsylvania Gazette
	Dawn Starts in the West by L. Robert Pyle ISBN 0-595-18302-6 Format: Paperback Our Price: $19.95	Con Ataxia was a farmboy. He knew nothing of the City except as the place of Market -- where his father sold their crops and got the finances for another season on the hardscrabble, mountain farm. He knew nothing of the Commander or the Army. He knew less about the Rebels. The Dragon and Dragon Raiders were mythical beings used by old women to make the children obey -- until the Raiders murdered his sisters and kidnapped his father on that first day of his eighteenth Market. Then, Con had to learn quickly. He had to learn who were friends and who were enemies. He had to learn who had power and who did not. He had to learn to fight -- in a desperate battle for his father's soul -- and his own. Follow Con's journey through the Valley -- through the traps and hypocrisy of the City, through the training in the Commanders camp, to the final testing in the Dragon's Citadel. The story will keep you reading page after page. The symbols will stay with you for weeks after you've finished. The message will touch your heart.
	Dead Birds Singing by Marc Talbert ISBN 0-595-09768-5 Format: Paperback Our Price: $13.95	One minute Matt is relishing the sweet memory of victory, the king most young people daydream about; the next he is waking up in the hospital dealing with the trauma of a horrible car accident. His nightmare a reality, Matt realizes his life is changed forever. No matter how hard people try to make him feel at home, he cannot shake the over whelming feelings of anger, sadness, and aching loneliness inside him.This is a penetrating, often agonizing novel about one boy’s encounter with personal tragedy and how, ultimately, he learns to forgive.	"One of the most powerful books I've ever read. I was literally shaken by it." —Jim Trelease, author of the Read Aloud Handbook Marc Talbert has written many books for young readers, several of them published in seven foreign countries. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Tesuque, New Mexico. Visit his website at www.marktalbert.com
	The Death Valley Kids by Giovanni E Capurro ISBN 0-595-21408-8 Format: Paperback Our Price: $18.95	The Death Valley kids are all grown up and ready to explode in this satiric coming of age examination on values and beliefs of Post-Modern America. Four friends come of age on the lam from Johnny Law in this lacerating satire on Post-Modern Americana.
	Deep Blue Spells by August Tern ISBN 0-595-21485-1 Format: Paperback Our Price: $15.95	A story of undying loyalty, betrayal, and triumph that will sweep through your soul like a night train. A boy deeply troubled about his future. An aging drifter tormented by the past. They meet by a campfire in late summer and their lives are forever changed.
	The Deep Road, Part 1 by Frederick K Van Patten ISBN 0-595-18524-X Format: Paperback Our Price: $29.95	The story line of The Deep Road is a complex and subtle tale spun out in two volume, which rumbles through the last century. The Great Depression, the poison of successive wars, the culture of prosperity, turbulence, self-absorption and unbridled greed unfolds through the rich texture of the characters' lives. Their struggles and triumphs are played out against a backdrop of profound longing. At the heart of this chronicle stands a matriarch damaged by an early childhood trauma, a clairvoyant child tangled in the web of her fractious family, a self-loathing intellectual lost in the destructive politics of resistance, a black activist riddled with hopeless guilt, a disabled Vietnam Vet crippled by self-doubt, and a redheaded beauty, her fragile life slurred by drugs and alcohol. A deep-seated passion for literature and music (the monumental twins of American culture) underscores the plot in this fast-paced saga, as the characters search for an ancient antidote to the dread churned up by random and senseless evil. Love and loyalty couple to baffle the mindless disregard for individual dignity that mars modern society. An ageless epic, recast in modern times, The Deep Road tells its tale with ruthless honesty.	Frederick Van Patten lives with his family in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before writing fiction, he spent his creative currency on the theatre writing and directing for many years in the Bay Area. His plays have been produced on the West Coast. He is the author of the two-part family chronicle, The Deep Road, the mystery novel, The 13th Notebook, and Midsummer's Tale.
	The Deep Road, Part 2 by Frederick K Van Patten ISBN 0-595-18531-2 Format: Paperback Our Price: $28.95	The conclusion—This modern Epic of struggle and triumph captures the American spirit of survival. Told through four generations of family this chronicle records the history of men and women striving to fulfill their destiny. From a dirt farm in rural Oregon, through the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, and contemporary American culture, the family fights to carve out its distinctive mark and protect its claim. This intriguing novel is presented in two action-packed volumes.
	East Lies the Sun by Alla Crone ISBN 0-595-09218-7 Format: Paperback Our Price: $22.95	Awarded the Gold Medal Award by the West Coast Review of Books. An epic novel of a woman caught in the turmoil and suffering of the Russian Revolution. With indomitable courage, she would survive the savage ordeal of the Siberian Ice March to find love and make a new life in a world utterly changed.	"Alla Crone's byline will be eagerly sought by readers...the book brims with the authentic flavor of the time..." —The Sonoma Index-Tribune "The book was an immediate success …an exciting book…historically accurate." —Press Democrat "Another Zhivagian epic."—Russian River News