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.

 

Three for theMoney

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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The Anomalous Isle

Anomalous Isle…A Brief Synopsis

Lonely nine-year-old MARVIN only recalls the last three years of his life in a run-down orphanage because of amnesia. A day escape takes the orphans to The Grand Anomaly, a wondrous and traveling circus/carnival.

The two dozen Grand Anomaly entertainers—who exile on Anomalous Isle in a distant galaxy— arrive through the secret portal to Earth. DALISAY, a teenager forbidden to join because of her heritage, longs to see Earth and finally sneaks through the portal.
Dalisay encounters the orphans who unknowingly follow her return and scatter to explore Anomalous Isle. LUCAS and his small entourage, residents against The Grand Anomaly, discover the orphans—except for the lost explorer Marvin—and worry the uninvited kids will expose their hidden world. Lucas desires portal closure, which the entertainers won’t allow. Lucas needs strength, so he forces the kids on a dangerous journey across the island to retrieve the powerful Crimson Stick that allows control of the lion-like beasts who guard it.
Lucas acquires the magical Crimson Stick, but a chain of events transforms the lion-like beasts to rabidly attack everyone on the island.  Dalisay disobeying her forbiddance finally catches up—the release of a catastrophic fire-breathing flying monster determined to leave the island and trapped inhabitants to ashes.
Marvin surprisingly emerges and mysteriously leads the beasts to capture the flying monster. Marvin’s locked memories gradually return to reveal he is Dalisay’s brother, who supposedly had died. The siblings set off to learn the truth about Marvin’s disappearance and his unique connection to Anomalous Isle.

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The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension

The Jake Matthews Saga: Ascension…A Brief Synopsis

Jake Matthews is bored out of his mind. A blind, teenage boy with no purpose, no motivation, and relative peace and quiet surrounding him.

One night, Jake is dragged away to another dimension to a planet known as Figueroa. On this planet, he meets The White Figure General, X-Otropolis, who tells Jake he’s been chosen to stop The Great Figueroan War and defeat The Black Figure.

Jake finds himself learning swordplay and developing his might to save a planet that is more connected to Earth than he thinks as The Great Figueroan War spreads across dimensions, where Jake not only has to save two worlds, but enlist help from unlikely allies including Thalia, the girl he thought was lost to him forever.

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Mercy

Mercy…A Brief Synopsis

A century of political turmoil, military upheaval, cultural ferment, and Great Men, ultimately people of the 19th century call it The Century of Progress. Armies more massive than ever before march across continents and groups of refugees more numerous than ever before leave their homes, many losing loved ones. Some ancient values may change, perhaps disappear, some ancient evils may survive, perhaps thrive. Russians eye lands around the Black Sea, and enviable peace reigns in the Holy Land.

A Russian boy named Fyodor tries to make sense of his life in his village and of the larger world in that progressing century as he grows into young manhood, middle age, and older. He tries to maintain dedication to family, community, humor, and conscience. Fyodor suspects the greatest challenge a person has in life is to believe in the goodness of life but he struggles against mere blind faith in that goodness and against the heavy if not intolerable burden of the alternative.

And who is following him?

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