Books

Curse of the Ravenscrofft Brides: A Regency Romantasy (The Ravenscrofft Chronicles Book One)

Curse of the Ravenscrofft Brides, The Ravenscrofft Chronicles, Volume One, introduces readers to a cast of compelling and intriguing characters in a spicy, Regency-era Romantasy in which shape changers abound. Mystical forces are in play and powerful, wise women penetrate the mists of the future to protect their loved ones.
Sofia and Wyatt will have to unearth long-buried family secrets, battle uncontrollable urges and face death before they can claim their happy ending.

Breaking Up on X: 20 Poems for a Nation in Crisis

Breaking Up on X: 20 Poems for a Nation in Crisis is a collaborative response to our current national crisis. Dedicated to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in appreciation for their century-long work defending the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,  all profits from the sale of this book will help support their on-going work during this difficult time in American history (www.aclu.org).

This book, which is about how individuals can push back against injustice, is dedicated to The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in appreciation for their century-long work defending the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. We are proud to donate all profits from the sale of this book to help support their ongoing work during this difficult time in American history. (www.aclu.org)

Love at Midnight: A Regency Christmas Romantasy — New Edition!

17-year-old, orphaned Lady Grace Cooper is doing everything she can to find her one true love. If she doesn’t hurry, her corrupt trustees will marry her off to the man of their choice so they can steal her inheritance.

What’s a girl to do? There’s the ancient apple peel ritual that reveals the letters of one’s true love’s name. A local fortune teller gives Lady Grace important advice. And then there’s the unusual Christmas Eve ritual that she must perform to convince her closest animal friends to help her.

Based on the Norwegian legend that animals can speak in the human tongue at midnight on Christmas Eve, Midnight Miracle tells a powerful, sweet story of true love. Featuring cats with unusual abilities, a handsome earl in disguise, a surrogate mother, and a thrilling fable, true love prevails.

Love at Midnight is a sweet romance that will brighten every reader’s winter holiday. It delivers a story of love, family, and community that will appeal to teenagers and baby boomers alike. Because everyone deserves a happy ending.

Anarchy at Almacks: A Story of Love at First Sight

It’s love at first sight across Almack’s crowded ballroom in this sweetly erotic, Regency era-romance. There’s only one problem: dashing Admiralty spy Lord Maximillian Browning and breathtaking, red-haired Miss Rowan Higbee can’t seem to get introduced to one another! All their plans to meet keep going awry!

Rowan and Max’s love story plays out against the background of the 1804 London Season. Before they can find their happy ending, Rowan and Max will have to contend with a temperamental French modiste, a Venetian Breakfast gone wrong, Rowan’s horse-mad, hot-headed brother and a collection of unlikely villains. Max doesn’t know it, but Rowan’s past may actually present the biggest obstacle of all.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 61 Haiku (1,037 Syllables!) New Edition

The Power of the Perfect Pick-Up Line: Jane Austen Makes Her Move
Emily Dickinson once famously remarked that if she felt as though the top of her head were taken off, she knew she was reading poetry. And who among us did not read “It is a truth universally acknowledged, …” and feel our heads explode?
Pride and Prejudice’s opening sentence is also the perfect pick-up line. The narrator zeroes in on her reader and introduces herself with what has become one of English literature’s most quoted opening sentences.
Austen continues to flirt with her reader in the first sentences of each of the book’s 61 chapters. So, how better to acknowledge the power of her collective one-line poetry than by translating Pride and Prejudice’s opening-sentence poems into contemporary twists on the classic Japanese 17-syllable haiku?
And here you have it: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 61 Haiku (1,037 Syllables!).

Everything Becomes a Poem

James Gaynor’s poems are expansive, dark, funny, full of the joy of living. His grim acknowledgements of tragic truths are never brooding, while the more seemingly lighthearted verses are deep and honest and real. We are fortunate indeed that, in Gaynor’s hands, “Everything Becomes a Poem.”

I’ll Miss You Later

While personal papers during the COVID lockdown, poet James W. Gaynor came across a pocket notebook he had written in from 1986 to 1997. He had used it to organize 38 memorial services as he lost friends and loved ones to the AIDS pandemic. The information contained included contact information for relatives, newspapers, venues, florists, ministers, rabbis, a rebel Jesuit, and a Wiccan priestess – as well as scribbled notes about possible poems. Rereading the notebook — 23 years after its last entry – inspired Gaynor to go back, find the poems and put them the chronological order they suggested themselves. The result is I’ll Miss You Later — a poetry memoir in 20 parts about loss and survival, forged in one epidemic, emerging in a second. It’s a record of perseverance and a tribute to the humor that get us through the worst life can throw at us.

40 Inappropriate Poems for Weddings + Funerals: Knowing what not to say is always a good first step

“Poetry is most often experienced unintentionally at private ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, with eighty percent of the potential audience and more than ninety percent of the current audience reporting that they’ve been exposed to poetry at one of these private occasions.”

— Poetry in America Study commissioned by the Poetry Foundation

The choice of what to read at a ritual requiring poetry can be daunting. In recognition of that fact, this collection aspires to be helpful in identifying some poems best read before or after – but not actually at – the ceremony in question.

As the poet points out, “Knowing what not to say is always a good first step.”