Tranquil Reader

Book Cover Year Published: 2016 Genre: Contemporary; Drama with tiny little bits of military in it. Blurb: Jen is an all-American teenage girl who struggles with her Iranian heritage. Hoping she will connect with the culture and traditions he values, her father takes her to visit the land of his birth.  Her mother's worst fears are realized when Jen is kidnapped and sold into modern day slavery.  Follow the story of an extraordinary young woman who refuses to be a victim. Cheer for her as she fights to stay alive and to ultimately find her way home. Follow the Path of Jen. About the Author: Sidney A. Wood, lives in a small, sleepy town in Alaska's Matanuska Valley. In the summer, he hikes, fishes, and rides the tires off his Harley. In the winter, he throws snowballs at his beautiful wife and teenage daughters, and then laughs at their cries of betrayal with his faithful dog and partner in crime, Cuddles. Yes, he let his daughter name her (face pal...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2018 Genre: Drama Blurb: For centuries, poets have argued that unrequited love is love in its strongest form. From Afar is a timeless tale of Morgan Stanfield's search for love in the far northern city of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Leaving the warm climate of Santa Barbara, he embarks on a four-day odyssey where he encounters a Russian beauty, a prostitute, a wise old babushka, an American chauvinist, intellectuals, the Russian mafia, and the 'face' of love, and comes to know how love from a distance can be more captivating than love close on hand. About the Author: Frank Scozzari is an American novelist and screenwriter. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his short stories have been widely anthologized and featured in literary theater. Connect with the Author: Facebook:  Frank Scozzari Facebook Twitter:  Frank Scozzari Twitter Author Website:  Frank Scozzari Author Website Buy the Book: Amazon:...

Book Cover Year Published: 2015 Genre: Historical Fiction with a little bit of romance Blurb: Willis Hancocks is a bright, ambitious young man who wants to break out of his small-town existence and make a difference in the world. When WWII breaks out, he rushes to enlist, despite his parents' disapproval. As the world falls apart, Willis finds a way to forge through and finds solace in an incomparable friendship and a surprising, brief encounter with a love that takes hold and eventually threatens to jeopardize the life he strives to build while battling his post-war demons. While Willis is set on building a new world for himself with a single-minded goal for personal success-a lucrative, purposeful, easy lifestyle-obstacles are continuously thrown in his path, and he must embrace, overcome, or dodge them entirely. In the course of the choices he makes, and the destiny that is chosen for him, he unwittingly drags the people who are closest to him down into the darkne...

Book Cover Year Published: 2014 Genre: Contemporary Blurb: Lemmon Grandee is sad and bitter about life. He is fighting the retirement blues and mourning the sudden loss of his wife. Lonesome and heartbroken, his friend and neighbors fear the worse. Suicide seems like the perfect antidote for him.  Things change when while cleaning out his late wife’s studio, he uncovers hidden letters from his runaway daughter, Gloria, currently living a new life in New York City with her eight-year old son. Lemmon suddenly finds the spark of life he thought he had long lost. He gets on a bus headed to New York with the intention of rekindling his relationship with his daughter and see about convincing her to return home. Who knows? It just might bring an end to the nightmarish dreams plaguing him lately—dreams that foretell of a dark future awaiting him and his lost family.  A story of love and death, pain and loss, and the courage to find second chances in life. Abou...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2013 Genre: Suspense; Spy Blurb: A psychological spy thriller set in 1960 in the quiet South American capital of Montevideo, Uruguay an unconventional distant posting at the height of the Cold War. The city is at first glance an unassuming battleground: the Rio de la Plata lapping at its shores, cobblestone streets lined with narrow buildings decorated with filigree ironwork, and overall a distinct colonial feel, but also with a palpable old European influence. At the center of the intrigue are two Cold War intelligence officers, a British MI6 officer, and the Soviet KGB Rezident. Both are seasoned operatives in the shadowy clandestine world of spies. Outwardly, the two are enemies but the Britisher is not what he seems. He has close secret ties to the Rezident who recruited him years ago in Belgium as a double agent. The intricate chilling details of the eventual betrayal of the MI6 officer as his life and work suddenly unravel ends c...

The Copy that I Read Year Published: 2002 Genre: Contemporary; Drama Blurb: My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In heaven, Susie Salmon can have whatever she wishes for - except what she most wants, which is to be back with the people she loved on earth. In the wake of her murder, Susie watches as her happy suburban family is torn apart by grief; as her friends grow up, fall in love, and do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But as Susie will come to realize, even in death, life is not quite out of reach . . . A luminous, astonishing novel about life and death, memory and forgetting, and finding light in the darkest places, Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones became an instant classic when it was first published in 2002. There are now over ten million copies in print. It inspired the film starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Saoirse Ronan. About the A...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: Drama; Women's Fiction Blurb: It’s 1958 and Shona Jackson, a twenty-something tomboy, is on the run from the neighborhood in Louisiana where her dark secret has been exposed.  Arriving in Alabama, Shona convinces the kind Jeffrey Ellis, wealthy co-owner of Ellis and Bruce Machinery, to give her a job and heads to the site with hopes of becoming invisible while she saves up the money to continue her journey to safety. There, she strikes up a bond with Cuban, who is on a similar path to her, but is racially abused on a daily basis by the workforce and by Jeffrey Ellis’s brutal business partner, Larry Bruce. Shona also meets Elbie, the elderly tool room supervisor, who has been covertly keeping a diary of all the horrific acts that have been carried out over the last five years by Bruce and his associates. As Elbie helps Shona and Cuban settle into their jobs, they are introduced to Chloe Bruce, Larry’s daughter, re...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2013 Genre: Drama; Suspense Blurb: Dr. Cylus Pine, an experimental psychologist takes in serial criminals to rehabilitate through group therapy.  Remus enters Dr. Pines facility after exacting revenge of his abusive father. He begins his therapy with a serial killer, a mother, a bomber, and rape victim. Through the course of their therapy they discover the true effects of their crimes.The cause though is up to their interpretation of their own truth.  PROGENY is the first of six novels. About the Author: Working at a grocery store for over 12 years now, working every position there and becoming one of the managers of a corporate chain store, I have seen and heard it all in the retail/service world. I had to get those stories, thoughts, feelings, and ways to escape out of my head. I had to write not out of compulsion but out of a love of writing.  I grew up in a small town in Southwestern Michigan (coincid...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2016 Genre: Drama; Humorous Blurb: Who is the mysterious Rudy Kazoody, and what, if anything, did he have to do with the events that occurred to a group of teenagers during one fateful summer in New York City’s Bronx neighborhood in the early 1960s?  Growing up is difficult enough. But when you’re a recent immigrant arriving in a country that is going through its own coming-of-age process, fueled by rock ‘n’ roll, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, free love, the pill, LSD, and the Cold War, it’s downright confusing, and for some—lethal.  With the various upheavals shaking America to its core, Joey, whose family emigrated to the Bronx from Italy’s Apennine Mountains, struggles to retain his innocent, optimistic outlook on life as he and the other young teenagers on Arthur Avenue—virtually all of whom also come from immigrant, working-class families—try to find their place in this new order.  From the euphor...