Melting Faces in a Cracked Mirror. There is only so much that we can get away with in life. This temporary life we lead, has not a single favorite. This book of layered rhythmic poems, ballads & prose, is one for the underdog. It is a collection based on real and imaginary characters, who are faced with racial concerns and other world issues and hardships that we experienced in 2020. Through people, things, & even places, that we may not identify with, these poems allow us to look at our worldly reflections while we struggle to revamp our images during this temporary stay in this fractured orgonite crystal ball.

Melting Faces in a Cracked Mirror. There is only so much that we can get away with in life. This temporary life we lead, has not a single favorite. This book of layered rhythmic poems, ballads & prose, is one for the underdog. It is a collection based on real and imaginary characters, who are faced with racial concerns and other world issues and hardships that we experienced in 2020. Through people, things, and even places, that we may not identify with, these poems allow us to look at our worldly reflections while we struggle to revamp our images during this temporary stay in this fractured orgonite crystal ball.

Tony Alum's Images from a Broken Mirror is a factional account of the fractious, violent, vicious circle in which African immigrants are trapped in Europe. Set in France and Italy, the story dwells on the trafficking of Nigerian women to Italy. Using the persona, Efe, a trafficked Nigerian girl, the author explores the pressures that come together to propel the men and women, young and old, from Africa to Europe. Efe goes through the tedious and dangerous life of an immigrant commercial sex worker in Italy. She falls in love with Carlo, her first client. Carlo proposes marriage to Efe who accepts and becomes pregnant. However, Efe takes a decision, in a moment of frustration, that will change her destiny, that of Carlo and the unborn child. Tony Alum has used this novel in a dialectical manner to x-ray the multifarious conflicts that dovetail to make life for the African immigrant in Italy a nightmare. Like most works of fiction, the author has reflected aspects of his experiences in Italy. The evidences of this closeness abound. For instance, the descriptions in the book are so graphically represented that one nearly for

Sam Shannon suffers from deep depression due to lack of meaning in his life. A group of six friends knows that Sam has the potential of becoming a spiritual warrior, one who fights evil where it is born on the astral plane of existence. Dave, the leader of the group, tries to encourage Sam to embark on a vision quest to find the purpose of his life. Sam is too fearful to go, having lost control of his mind for three days the last time he touched the spiritual realm. Sam swears never to journey into alternate dimensions again, but a lethal threat to himself and to his friends forces him to break his oath. Dave invites the group to his cabin in the woods with the secret intention of encouraging Sam to overcome his fears. Nan, a woman jealous of Sam's spiritual potential, hires her former boyfriend, Bulldog, to ensure Sam never reaches spiritual warrior status. Dave realizes Nan's intentions to do Sam harm. He and the others plan to save Sam, but Nan, having spiritual gifts of her own, creates etheric prisons that capture the group's minds and souls. Sam learns of his friends' plight and must overcome his fear of journeying into the astral plane if he is to save their souls. Sam must slay his own inner demons before saving his friends, and must also face the more difficult challenge of defeating the evil inside Nan.

In this first poetry collection by a talented young writer, Yvonne Blomer vividly recreates the experience of being a foreigner in Japan, while reflecting on the nature of strangeness and familiarity - how that strangeness can itself be familiar, and the way we carry the places we love with us wherever we go.

Mothers are there to protect the child, to chase away the monsters from our nightmares, not to be the feared monster. Not all Mother's Day are remembered with a reminiscent smile. The twisting of the soul began so long ago, that eighty years after it seems only yesterday. This book is about life, real life, the one many of us wish not to have been there, but we were, and nobody took the trouble to tell about. Fathers, supposed to protect the child should have been there too. "Bad memories" have a mother, her name? Solitude.

The second verse of any song always has to be more killer than the first. Always. The rhythm has to slap. The lyrics must be on point. The feeling intense. And the impact mad definitive. It’s just the way it is. In the same way, if you do well once in life, then you always have to be better from that point onwards. No doubt. East London, aka Slummies, circa 1998. Bokang Damane is a dreamer and an outsider with mad problems. Things only get worse when everyone thinks he wants to off himself just because he wrote an essay on suicide. Really? Talk about d.r.a.m.a. Life at the moment is just a sorry son-of-a-checklist of insolvable problems. Problem #1: Not black enough for the black kids and too black for the white kids. Yep, that’s what happens when you attend a mad pompous all boys’ college and live in the burbs. Problem #2: Family finances are a joke – they can’t even afford Bokang’s initiation. Now he can’t get props like any decent Xhosa man. Problem #3: An alcoholic, gambling attorney for a father who expects the world to bend to his will. What’s a man gotta do? Apart from freaking the hell out? Bokang just wants to rap, sketch and be left alone. Everyone keeps yacking on about Bokang reaching his true potential but everyone keeps getting in the way. So what happens? Boy meets girl. It wouldn’t be much of a story otherwise.