In a world brimming with seasoned poets and established voices, it is a rare and refreshing delight to encounter the debut collection of a young poet whose work transcends age and experience. At barely 16, Alvera Ahmed comes with a voice that is at once profound and strikingly intrusive. Respiring with a sincerity only youth can give to it, yet carrying the weight and wisdom of a soul that gazed long into the human experience, her poetry is finally recognizable.

"In March of 1909, Mark Twain cheerfully blessed the wedding of his private secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, and his business manager, Ralph Ashcroft. One month later, he fired both, wrote a ferocious 429-page rant about the pair, and then --with his daughter, Clara Clemens--slandered Isabel in the newspapers, erasing her nearly seven years of devoted service to their family."--Page 4 of cover

In Palladium Eastern Empires, Marc Lane weaves the myth of the Palladium into a tale of the dying days of the Byzantine Roman Empire. Set in the reign of Alexius Comnenus, one of the last great Emperors, the story of the Palladium is set against the backdrop of the dynastic struggle between his son John and his son-in-law Nicephoros Bryennius and daughter, Anna Comnena (future author of the Alexiad). Alexius faces plots by the Anemades brothers and Prince Aaron of Bulgaria, external attack by Bohemund of Antioch - and prevails against all with Palladian protection. Yet her fate is not to remain in the Byzantine sphere. Nicephoros - in league with a Papal legate Mavros of Amalfi - sends his Jewish slave Jacob forward to Jerusalem with the Palladium, to secure a means of seizing the Roman crown... This book is Part One - the events of 1106-1108, in the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Land. Part Two (Approach the Throne) tells the story of the Palladium from the Holy Land to France, in the hands of four crusaders (and future Knights Templar), Godfrey, Hughes, Roland and Gondamer, against the background of the rise of France and Burgundy, the rebirth of trade at the Champagne fairs and the new monasticism of Bernard of Clairvaux.

Viking Raids at the End of Time. 972. Tallinn. Sigrid, a Norwegian girl, is sold in the slave market and separated from her brothers. As a slave in the French Limousin, she stubbornly clings to her pagan identity. Audebert is imprisoned in a grim dungeon for his brother’s crime. If Audebert is ever released, he has a life to lead, a great destiny to fulfil. Guy will soon be viscount of Limoges but fears exposure of his near-blindness and challenge to his authority. Adalmode and Aina are great heiresses attempting to resist the unwelcome pressures of the marriage market. Their stories tangle with questions of nobility, freedom, friendship and courage in the highly stratified and often brutal society of early medieval Europe. Amid Viking raids, fears of The End of Time and turbulent power struggles, The Viking Hostage tells these interweaving stories in late 10th century France and Wales. ‘Three instantly likeable women fight the system from within.’ The Book Bag

In Love Like Thunder, the 2018 volume of the inSpirit series, a vibrant new poetic voice invites us into an intimate relationship with nature, God, and love itself. Jess Reynolds weeps in the desert at night, meditates on heart emojis, lets a river of love run wildly in their body, and together with their partner God goes to couples counseling to find their way. Jess Reynolds’ lyric poetry flows like water between genders, between body and spirit, and between earth and sky.

From some accidents of love and weather we never quite recover. At the worst of the Prairie dust bowl of the 1930s, a young man appears out of a blizzard and forever alters the lives of two sisters. There is the beautiful, fastidious Lucinda, and the tricky and tenacious Norma Joyce, at first a strange, self-possessed child, later a woman who learns something of self-forgiveness and of the redemptive nature of art. Their rivalry sets the stage for all that follows in a narrative spanning over thirty years, beginning in Saskatchewan and moving, in the decades following the war, to Ottawa and New York City. Disarming, vividly told, unforgettable, this is a story about the mistakes we make that never go away, about how the things we want to keep vanish and the things we want to lose return to haunt us.

In the first book in a brilliant new fantasy series, books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, and it is up to the Librarian to track down any restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories. Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing-- a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell….and Earth.