Tag: Literary Fiction

A SoCal Story by Ben Coulter

What do you do when you fall for your best friend’s girl? Your best friend who just happens to be an international film star and a girl who just happens to be a drug-crazed supermodel? Can an introverted London author really handle the heat of L.A. and all its wicked ways? Find out in A SoCal Story…

Ben Coulter’s fourth novel sees him climb out from the grungy pool of the urban crime thriller and aspire to the lofty heights of contemporary literary fiction, while continuing to employ the same grit, addictive mystery and relentless tension he has become known for.

Tony Lowe is an internationally published author, achieving the aspiration of so many. But Tony isn’t one of the many, Tony is one of the few. The 1 in 4 few who suffer the torment of a noxious mind. His collapsing mental health will not allow him to appreciate his literary achievement and his self-doubt threatens to turn to self-sabotage.

When he receives a call from his university room-mate, Marley George, asking him to come to L.A. to adapt his novel to film, he doesn’t hesitate in saying yes. Marley is now a fully fledged Hollywood heart-throb, garnering international fame and vast wealth.

Soothed by warm winter sunshine and laid-back Malibu living, Tony settles into the L.A. lifestyle, calming his dependency on prescription drugs and limiting time spent with poisonous memories. He feels his frosty mental health begin to thaw in the warm SoCal sun.

But he soon finds himself swapping one addiction for another as he spends more time with Abi Hart, Marley’s supermodel partner. The celebrity couple’s relationship is on the rocks and Tony falls for her New York charms like a struggling actress for the Hollywood casting couch. She welcomes him into her world without limitation. A world of A-list celebrity and class A narcotics.

He quickly discovers that the reality of life in LaLa Land is profoundly different from the one portrayed on the silver screen. Racked with feelings of guilt for betraying his friend, and an immoral fear of losing his movie deal, he struggles to resist Abi and all the libertine lust she dispenses.

Southern California is the land where fantasy can come true, but just as soon be slung onto Skid Row, discarded, broken and bruised with a hundred dollar a day habit.

Will Tony live the dream, or suffer the nightmare? One thing is sure, just because it sparkles, doesn’t mean it shines.

Author: Ben Coulter

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

A Lion in Your Number: A Novel by Kevin Klix

Twenty-two-year-old diarist Sally Fairfax is both beautiful and Autistic. After tinkering with her daily entries, fibbing to not only herself but her “Future Self,” Sally feels she is misinterpreted for her pleasing outside looks and shunned for her eccentric ideals; unable to execute them to her womanly advantage. From losing mundane dead-end jobs, clubbing with her illustrious friend “Molly,” and even vacationing inside Magic Kingdom, Sally’s adventurous life is, as she puts it, “full of Lions inside Numbers.” From the author of Biflocka comes a gritty, quirky-humored epistolary novel written from the troubled mind of a beautiful female with Aspergers Syndrome.

Author: Kevin Klix

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

The Dweller on Mountain White: An Accidental Love Story by R.J. Kenzie

An Accidental Love Story.

Beth Porter’s intent to relax and get her life in order on a personal ski trip is shattered when she makes a wrong turn, gets lost, and careened her car into a snow-filled ditch on Mountain White. Delirious, and half-unconscious, she is plucked from the brink of death by a mountain monster, or so she thought.
The mountain monster had a name, and it was Tyler Skov, a quiet mountain dweller who prefers books to television and walkie-talkies to cellphones. Accustomed to the silence and living alone, he is forced to adjust to Beth’s non-stop chatter and New York state of mind.
Learning to coexist, they discover that they have more in common than they realized and that an accidental car crash created more than a friendship, it created a bond that could not be broken, or forgotten.

Author: R.J. Kenzie

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

East by Kirk Kjeldsen

Fourteen-year-old Job Hammon ekes out an itinerant existence in the Pacific Northwest, in a not-too-distant future where China and other industrial economies have become primary world powers, and the United States has become a fractured, post-industrial wasteland. When Job learns that the mother he’d thought had died years before had actually left to seek work in Asia, he emigrates there in hopes of finding her and finding a better life. Set to a backdrop of such issues as immigration, industrialization, and climate displacement, East offers a harrowing and all-too-possible glimpse at a post-American diaspora struggling to find a new place in the world.

Author: Kirk Kjeldsen

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

State of Fate by Cătălin Rojișteanu

“State of Fate” is a novel that can be interpreted as fiction, and equally as a quasi-oneiric experience. It is a multicultural family saga, expanded in the commotion of the magnetism of the new world, created by the world existing in the depths of the self and which happens to touch on the First World War.I wanted and I believe I managed to transmit an acute feeling of continuous cinematographic projection, in order to create a book that can only be read by imagining, which disturbs and rejoices while reading it, with the purpose of creating a sensory approach and a willingly analytical one for expanding an atmosphere unique to each person, of fairytale and introspection at the same time. Since I found a credible storyteller, I ensure you that all the events you are about to read about are real stories.I took the liberty of allowing my characters to choose their path freely, as well as the moment of their introduction or participation. In the absence of another managerial or senatorial act, I thank my heroes for being with me and I wish them a long life, ensured only by the joy of the reader, to whom I bow and thank.Enjoy the show!

Author: Cătălin Rojișteanu

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

The Dean Sisters by Michael Corrigan

Two very different sisters, Jessica and Gerry Dean, find a strange redemption.
Jessica Dean, 24 and a war hero, dies in a car crash, leaving behind warring families, including Roland Dean, a grieving father and former cop. Jessica also leaves behind her fiancé, Airman Sean Riordan, a former lover named General Douglas Lancaster, and her rebellious, drug-addicted half-sister, Gerry Dean. A fatal confrontation with gang members ultimately leads to Gerry Dean’s unexpected recovery. A screenwriter friend named Mickey Gilmore discovers Jessica’s journal and seeks gold at the Emmys with the unfolding stories of the Dean Sisters. Jessica’s story does not end in death, and Roland Dean realizes he must accept and love his outlaw step-daughter, Gerry.

Author: Michael Corrigan

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

Fallow Park Today by Joseph Glenn

Meredith St. Claire, former star of the television situation comedy Pots of Luck, has come to Fallow Park on its fifteenth anniversary. She and a film crew are preparing a documentary to mark the occasion. As she and the filmmakers interview the staff and residents, we are confronted with how badly the park has deteriorated and how difficult life has become for the last GLBT people in the United States. Unknown to the park officials and her film crew, Meredith has a secret son, now in his forties and living at the park. Her object is to use the documentary as a cover for her plan to help him escape. Her efforts are complicated by the park’s bombastic, self-absorbed director and an undercover vigilante who has his own sense of justice.

Author: Joseph Glenn

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

The Hack List by Daniel Amspaugh

Sebastian is a typical waiter. Everyone in the service industry hits a breaking point with customers whose demands are unrealistic. The customer has been given the delusion that he or she is always right.

After being confronted for the last time, and with the help of a mysterious therapist, Sebastian puts into motion a plan to murder his worst customers. Meanwhile, the restaurant has become home to a large colony of cockroaches. They need customers to survive. Can they stop him before it’s too late? Or will they succumb to extermination brought forth by the elusive Mr. X?

Author: Daniel Amspaugh

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews

Tears Wept and a Promise Kept: Poetry by by James Wraieth

I must admit this is the hardest thing I’ve ever published. Not because of the words, but because of what they mean to me. Many of these poems was written during very low points in my life. Times that I felt like there was no relief from the pain. I found that relief in writing these words, and though the very thought of sharing them terrifies me. I also sincerely hope that in some small way, they bring you as a reader comfort as well.

Author: James Wraieth

Rating: Rating: 5.00 / 5
5 reviews