Alice Hollywell, the young spitfire from Hollywood, and her best friend, the poor little rich girl Em Martín from nearby Bel Air, CA, are stationed on a remote military base in West Texas in the mid-1970s. Worldly Alice "Hollywood" Hollywell is notorious for changing "teams" without notice. Em is shy and seemingly sheltered and has a secret. Despite their differences, their friendship blossoms into something they never imagined. The arrest of their friend Whitey, and rumors about an investigation into his friends and associates creates a frightening environment, complicating everything. On base, and particularly within their inner circle, the atmosphere is rife with suspicion and fear. Alice and Em realize the military is a very dangerous place for them, and quickly find themselves in the middle of a rabid witch-hunt. Decisions are made with disastrous consequences. Alice Hollywood is a bonafide page-turner, leading the reader down a road of what's next and through myriad subplots, making this multi-dimensional story and its equally dimensional characters a reader's delight. Once you start reading, you won't want to stop, even when you read the last line. But don't worry, because there's much more to come. Alice Hollywood is Book One of The Em Suite Series.

All is well with Em Martín and her alternative family circle. In fact, things couldn't be better. She and her partner are back at home in Bel Air, CA after helping Dot Baverstock get back on her feet in Palm Springs, and have fully embraced their new roles. Em is happy and beyond content, feeling lucky she's found "the one." Life is really good. Until... it's not. As if on cue, Eve Magnussen's past, one she's kept buried for two decades, has suddenly bubbled to the surface. A past, that when fully revealed, has the potential to blow up her perfect life. Prairie Vaughn's Montana family suffers a health crisis, and Dot encounters danger and experiences a devastating loss. And, in the blink of an eye, everyone's favorite and seemingly unbreakable couple is on the verge of broken. What is the line that cannot be crossed... the bridge too far... the things that cannot be undone and threaten to unravel a solid relationship? Will Eve's past prove too terrible, sordid, and unforgivable? Will love win? In Book 5 of The Em Suite Series, A Woman Like Eve, Eve reveals her painful and sordid history, taking readers on a not-so-nostalgic trip back to the hedonistic Seventies and Eighties. Meanwhile, Em seeks to relocate and create the perfect domain for her growing family.

In this sequel/prequel to The Incredible Transformations of Alice Hollywood, nearly twenty years have passed since a fiery crash changed Em Martín’s life. Now living in Los Angeles, and known professionally as Mackenna, a recent life-altering tragedy has her in an emotional tailspin. Memories and regrets previously buried and ignored have been churned up. In a desperate effort to stop her downward spiral into melancholy, Mackenna turns to her writing for emotional support; as well as a vehicle for getting to the root cause of her current mental and emotional frailty. While culling through her life for clues, the Southland is rocked by a devastating earthquake, further complicating Mackenna’s difficult self-exploration. Enter Eve, an earthquake refugee and an uncomfortable reminder of a past Mackenna has spent many years trying to ignore—and forget. A delicate dance of avoidance ensues until a devastating secret is exposed, driving Mackenna to the edge of disaster. Will Eve be the last straw, and push Mackenna over the edge? Or will she be the one to save Mackenna from the lower depths? In a departure from her first novel, Alice Hollywood, Djuna Shellam takes us back and forth in time in a seamless fashion to tell the story in a story. Prepare yourself for a stunning twist that will take your breath away.

For as many reasons as there are days in a year... a century... or millennia, some novelists choose to write incognito. By using an alias, pen name; or, as the French so beautifully say, nom de plume, they'll cloak their true identities. The nom de plume, while convenient, does present a bit of a conundrum for the writer. Whose backstory or biography should an author employ introducing themselves to their reading public? Their own, or their literary double's. Enter the creative mind. The very nature of a fiction writer is to write fiction, is it not? Indeed, it is. And, so... Shellam's story begins in Australia as Siobhán Aoife O'Shea, the only child of Irish-born parents. Growing up on a remote farm, her young life is idyllic. Though isolated from everything beyond the farm, Siobhán's life is filled with work, her books, and her parents' love. As a young teen, tragedy ensues, forcing her to survive on her own and learn to live in a strange and mysterious world. In this coming-of-age story, Djuna Shellam—nom de plume—author of The Em Suite Series, shares the early years of an unconventional life in Vol 1 of her memoir series, The True-Life Adventures of Djuna Shellam. Beginning in the Victoria countryside, her story continues to Melbourne, VIC. Siobhán enters uncharted territory that's fraught with challenges, discoveries, love, and heartache. As she gains a footing in her new world, solved mysteries and shared secrets create lifelong bonds in the gripping story of an extraordinary life.

God Rocks! Or at least for an increasing fraction of the global population he does. No longer associated with evangelical 'happy clappers' sporting tambourines and sandals, these days the Christian message is being delivered by a swelling number of faithful musicians from every genre - rock, pop, R&B, dance and country. Of course, the real aim to promote God remains, but at least it's not so cringeworthy anymore.

'I danced and danced because the neon light across the road had just blinked on, because it was the middle of spring, because I was twenty-one, because my father was playing beside me. . . .' In this vivid, seductive, gorgeously written memoir, Mandy Sayer recounts the fascinating years she spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father. Gerry Sayer was a jazz drummer, a beguiling Irish charmer with a million stories and an insatiable love for jam sessions and all-night parties. Mandy grew up captivated by his outrageous tales even after he left the family for good and her mother descended into the distance of drink. When her siblings failed him by rejecting the bohemian performing life, Mandy saw her chance to become a character in his stories, part of the only life he really loved. So she learned to tap-dance, and they set off together to satisfy their grand ambitions on the toughest stage in the world - New York. Driven by their dream of making it big, Mandy and Gerry arrived in the city with no place to stay and only costumes to their names. They became part of the thrilling, precarious world of street performers - jugglers, magicians, fire-eaters, dancers - who eked out their livings at the mercy of the elements, the cops, complaining neighbors, and lurking thieves.

Hollywood's Silent Closet provides a banquet of information about the pansexual intrigues of Hollywood between 1919 and 1926, compiled from eyewitness interviews with men and women, all of them insiders, who flourished in its midst. Not for the timid, it names names and doesn't spare the guilty. If you believe, like Truman Capote, that the literary treatment of gossip will become the literature of the 21st century, then you will love Hollywood's Silent Closet. Hollywood's Silent Closet is a vivid portrait of the decadent, homosexual, and gossipy world of pre-talkie Hollywood. It's an Info-Novel where 90% of everything in it is true. It represents the greatest collection of star-studded scandal ever assembled on the film stars of Hollywood's Silent Era. Valentino, Ramon Novarro, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Pola Negri, Nazimova, and many others figure into eyewitness accounts of the debauched excesses that went on behind closed doors. It also documents the often tragic endings of America's first screen idols, some of whom admitted to being more famous than the monarchs of England and Jesus Christ combined. Many of the interviews that went into the compilation of this book were conducted between 1940 and 1974, as the subjects were nearing the end of their lives and were willing, at last, to reveal scandals and insights that had previously been repressed by their own fears and by the media machines of the studio system. Marriages of convenience are the norm as intra-male peccadillos (and lots of lesbian love, too) are swept under the potted palms of the Edwardian age. The hero of this tale is the amiably cross-dressing Durango Jones, a wide-eyed neophyte from Kansas, circa 1919, who hits Hollywood during its Pre-Code excesses, and stays for a sexual feast wherein the banquet consists of many of the era's most flamboyant sex symbols. And although technically, this title has been formatted as a novel rather than a straight-line biography, there's the sometimes disturbing sense that this book is genuinely historical as well as being a jolly and rollicking piece of very savvy entertainment. This is high-testosterone Hollywood at its most compulsively readable. The 60s didn't invent sex-the stars of the Silent Screen did. --Cruiser. Who slept with Mary Pickford's three husbands, her two brothers-in-law, and even her brother? The hero of Hollywood's Silent Closet, that's who! --Trova Roma.