V Life Cover

V-Life: So It Begins (Sugar Bernstein RV-Living Vampire Series, Book 1)… A Brief Synopsis

Undead friends can be the family you choose. (You just can’t invite them to the bat mitzvah.) Fangs out. This is Sugar Bernstein’s new now. A former New York ad woman and nobody’s fool, this freshly minted vampire is avoiding loved ones by driving the country alone in a luxury camper van. (“Luxury” and “camper van” seem mutually exclusive concepts when your routine involves a sewage hose.) If all that’s not enough, her man is dead; an evil, blood-sucking she-creature is on her tail; and an entire Jewish family is on her case. It’s a lot.

With no guidance, Sugar is struggling to learn as much as possible about the rules of undead existence. She’s dusting off the oldest and most authoritative vampire books and movies, and testing the truth of it all by trial and error. Sunlight good or sunlight bad? Enhanced senses or just over imagination? Animal blood or human blood—is there really a difference? (Spoiler Alert: Yes.) And when it comes to life with no obvious end, how the hell do you finance it? (So much for early retirement.)

In her travels, Sugar finds help in surprising places—like beneath the neon signage of the Moonglow chain of RV parks—each with a secret section designated “V-parking.” And there’s even an app for that. Seems that Sugar is not the only “V” who feels #VanLife is a smart way to go. At Moonglow, Sugar feels like she can let down her guard enough to allow in some fellow travelers. But making friends is dangerous business when an infamous and evil vampire bitch is hunting you down. Opening your heart can have deadly consequences.

Will Sugar outrun evil? Will she take a chance on love when her previous encounters ended in murder? Will she make it to her niece’s bat mitzvah without causing the synagogue to explode? In her shoes, what would you do?

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Bittersweet Fruit

Bittersweet Fruit…ABrief Synopsis

“The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is said to be the story of a family. Comment.”

That was the challenge put to author William LeRoy on a high school exam. Now, over sixty years later, LeRoy — still stumped by questions leading to questions — assigns to Maximo Morgan the private dickery task of doping out multiple Grapes mysteries left dangling”

Formatted as a combination of fact and fiction, which is which in the famous book? Are chapters billed as history really apochryphal, ad/or those seemingly imagined in truth documentary?

Who, if any particular people, were the models for the “Joad Family” that made the arduous trek from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to the verdant vineyards of California so dramatically depicted in The Grapes of Wrath?

Did “Tom Joad” escape capture after attempting to flee a muder charge for the killing of a thug hired by landowners to bust unionization of migrant “Okie” workers?

And was it Steinbeck who came up with the narrative for which he was awarded the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Literature, or would his attributed authorship be rightly called “a classic smash-and-grab: celebrated California author steals the material of unknown Oklahoma writer”?

Finally, on the 85th anniversary of the publication of Grapes, William LeRoy — thanks to somewhat helpful gumshoing by Maximo Morga a/k/a The Fat Man — is now able to comment.

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Pigs in Paradise

Pigs in Paradise…A Brief Synopsis

When Blaise gives birth to Lizzy, the “red calf” on a farm in Israel, the masses flock to witness the miracle that will usher the return of the Messiah or his arrival, and with him, the end of the world. When the promise of the end comes to an end, the red calf blemished, and no longer worthy of blood-letting sacrifice, the faithful the world over are crestfallen. By this time, two evangelical ministers, as representatives of a megachurch in America, witness the events.

Meanwhile, Pope Benevolent absolves the Jews, sings karaoke with Rabbi Ratzinger, and the Berkshire boar and Messiah, Boris, is served at the last supper. Not to be outdone, the Protestant ministers hold a nativity pageant, and just before the animals embark aboard a ship for America, Mel the mule becomes Pope Magnificent, with white linen cassock, pectoral cross, and papal red leather slippers.

Once in America, the animals are transported across the country to Wichita, Kansas in time for a Passion-Play parade. When they arrive at their final destination, a barn on a Christian farm, seven television monitors, tuned to 24/7 church sermons, are juxtaposed with scenes from a barn, a real circus. After a while, and no longer able to take anymore, they chase Mel from the barn, and Stanley, Manly Stanley, the black Belgian stallion of legend (wink, wink), kicks out the TV monitors for a moment of silence, giving peace a chance if only for a moment.

 

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The Joy Divisions

The Joy Divisions…ABrief Synopsis

The year is 1993, and art-school dropout Ed Pullman has returned to his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania—the enigmatic nexus where goth kids, coffeeshop culture, and sultry drag queens collide with neo-Nazis, the dying textiles industry, and an unsettling commune led by an aspiring cult leader named Tod Griffon. As Ed and his loving cousin Ester struggle to find their place in a bleakly earnest landscape of guerrilla conceptual art, post-NAFTA labor battles, and burning factories, their hometown marches stoically toward a disaster of biblical proportions. With its vivid and original recreation of a place and time that is both utterly real and surprisingly magical, Scott Dimovitz’s grittily nostalgic debut novel is a sensitively imagined fable about an unsuspecting world on the cusp of massive change.

 

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Shapless Summers

Shapeless Summers…ABrief Synopsis

The novel’s middle-aged protagonist, William Greenwood, leaves his country of England behind and takes work in the South Pacific. Looking for a fresh start, he gives up his longtime career as a sea captain and becomes a data scientist and then a development program manager. Told in a first-person narrative, the book’s story portrays his six years in this region, intertwined with brief home visits, as an expedition in contemporary Pacific Island countries and a journey of self-discovery. He finds a world in which to evolve himself, a world of new learning through various landscapes, characters, social backdrops, and working environments. Amid all, something William seemingly cannot sustain is a solid intimate attachment. He has a broken past marriage and little chance for viable relationships alongside his volatile jobs across several islands. Shapeless Summers is a tale of love, loss, discovery, and redemption. It illuminates what it is to be a man through Greenwood’s mishaps and struggles to overcome his own adversities in foreign places, and what it means to become a loving human being finding personal happiness.

 

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Marvelous Days

Marvelous Days…A Brief Synopsis

A widowed biologist, Kevin Brunner, an American expat in Germany, faces a life turn at the start of his retirement. The usual aspirations like romance, family, and career are seemingly past him now. He finds himself adrift after his adult son moves far away. Kevin seeks to travel and mostly takes trips to France as his preference. On the way, he experiences melancholy sometimes, especially after discovering his late wife’s unfaithfulness. But the constant voyages enable him to reflect on his past relations, connect with family and friends, and overcome his now-and-then moodiness. Appreciating this healthy habit, he relishes each moment of his expeditions. As he feels engaged in various places he passes, acknowledging their charms, even with dull or harsh weather, what means the most to him is meeting people at all stages of life and what he learns from them, not only as a meditative flâneur but also as a human fellow. Those unexpected encounters, events, and friendships make him change, and he realizes that something beyond those lone journeys is more meaningful to him.

In a first-person narrative voice, Marvelous Days depicts a man’s persistent striving in his solitary retirement years to achieve a stable mind through extensive travel as a remedy and a gateway to newness and joy.

 

Second Place: Three for the Money by William LeRoy

Three for the Money…A Brief Synopsis

In the face of waning cheap pulp paper supply, not to mention waning attention spans of readers, Mossik Press presents three pruned products of William LeRoy penmanship in a single bargain-priced binding, to-wit:

ACADEMENTIA CONFIDENTIAL, in which Maximo Morgan gumshoes not dirty water used by progressive professors in ivory towers to brainwash America’s youth. Originally published in Harvard Alum Annals MCMLXII.

BABE IN THE WOODS, in which Max attempts to rescue a runaway maiden from a not-so-charming prince. Publication commissioned as a party favor for a Cancun Club Med retreat of ms.brokenheart.org members.

CLEAN-UP ON AISLE 3, a case report documenting Max’s entanglement in murrrderrrous office politics inside the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Obtained for publication under the Freedom of Information Act.i

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Project Ubermensch

Project Unbermensch…A Brief Synopsis

Modern-day messiah or military experiment gone awry—either way, Geoffrey Cannon, a young inspirational guru, has mad metaphysical skills… and big troubles.

In 1943, unsuspecting sailors on the USS Eldridge are subjects of a U.S. Navy experiment. Sailors die, others are maimed, including Third mate Peter Smithwick whose amputated legs are restored through advanced extraterrestrial technology. Leaving the Navy, and fleeing his hometown, he escapes his dubious rescuers to go on the lam under a new name.

2024, in the tranquil mountain town of Kleary Creek, religious handyman, and all-around nice-guy, Orvin Littney meets his new neighbor, the mysterious and charismatic Geoffrey Cannon. While walking together one morning, Orvin experiences a heart attack, and is in the throes of death when Geoffrey miraculously saves his life. Miracles such as these, Orvin soon learns, account for Geoffrey’s cult-like following in the mystical, self-help community.

But Geoffrey’s life as a spiritual healer takes a dark turn when devotees are inexplicably murdered under grisly circumstances—all young women he’d had brief affairs with. Hikers and residents turn up dead, while rumors of a monstrous creature in the woods around Kleary Creek circulate, whispers of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti. With events growing ever more ominous, Orvin comes to believe his “savior” friend, Geoffrey, is somehow at the center of it all

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The Goatman

The Goatman…A Brief Synopsis

The Goatman is a coming-of-age fictional murder mystery set in North Georgia. The book weaves fiction with fact, integrating colorful characters from the author’s childhood. It is the story of Zeb Barton, a fourteen-year-old boy navigating the complexities of adolescence in a turbulent, increasingly dangerous era. The book threads together Zeb’s adventures with characters like his cantankerous, workaholic physician father (“Doc”), pugilistic friend Jake, gun-toting maid and mentor Thelka, and Wanda, the Sheriff’s daughter who’s wiser than her years and makes Zeb’s heart beat faster. Set in the 1960s, the aftermath of WWII casts a long shadow over the characters, with some haunted by the memories of combat and others grappling with death and loss. As Zeb and the other characters navigate their own internal struggles, a menacing presence looms over them all—the enigmatic Goatman, subject of murderous legends.

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SiP

SiP (The SiP Saga)…A Brief Synopsis

When an enormous red and white striped drinking straw appears in the Atlantic Ocean and sucks up his dad’s naval battleship, twelve-year-old Jim Moss is left with no choice but to face his fear of water and search for his father.
Teaming up with his wacky inventor uncle, a bunch of fishermen (who think they’re pirates), and a group of bizarre alien castaways, Jim’s incredible journey takes him from a sleepy village in Portsmouth, England across the Atlantic and into the very edge of space.

If that wasn’t enough, the President of the United States is trying to stop everyone from blowing the straw to pieces, while the Earth could well be doomed if Jim can’t convince the mysterious presence in orbit that the world is worth saving.
SiP by Marius Trevelean. The last straw for Planet Earth.

SiP is a science fiction mystery adventure for tween girls and boys thirsty for new and exciting books to read. Suitable for middle school kids ages 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 and even parents, teachers, grown-ups with a sense of humor, your Gran, anyone who loves adventure stories, science fiction, and funny books! All content is good, clean fun, and age-appropriate for school grades 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th.

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