Literary Fiction

MARKby Adam Darby

Lost in more ways than one, Mark wanders through wilderness and time trying to save himself and the people he loves.

He travels far from home to a jungle not yet crisscrossed by roads or power lines–not yet penetrated by cellphone signal or radio broadcasts. Mark leaves the relative comfort of middle-class America to explore a wilderness where grocery stores do not exist–where air-conditioning and the internet have never been found. He goes there searching for a place to clear his head–not at all prepared for what he finds.

Barefoot hunters capture Mark after he loses his way in the jungle–in the wet, endless maze of green and black. They take his shoes, his supplies and his freedom–dragging him back to their village where they hold him in bondage for years. The tribe forces Mark to carry firewood and battle their enemies–to fashion weapons for the men and toys for the children–to participate in strange rituals with the women during nights when the moon is full.

Mark learns the hard way as he struggles to overcome obstacles–as he strives to obtain his American dream. He finds out how quickly his tender feet can toughen and how easy it is to obey men with spears. He discovers how much he needs to tell his story to anyone who will listen–how difficult it is to remember the truth and how little some people care about facts. But most of all, he comes to realize how hard it can be to escape even places where there are no walls.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorryby Fredrik Backman

A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy–as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.

The Joy of Not Thinking: A Radical Approach to Happinessby Tim Grimes

Discover the Joy of Not Thinking…

When I was sixteen, I had a mental breakdown. It happened while I was on vacation in the Caribbean with my family. I’d been reading an old Zen book, and it did me in. I’d experienced some strange mental states before, but this was different. As I read this book, death moved to the foreground of all my thoughts–and then stayed there. I found myself in a tropical paradise, terrified. Living seemed too cruel to carry on with. Buddha had said all life was suffering and all that meant was that everything was hopeless. There was no way out. Escape was impossible. When you looked at things soberly, it was obvious. Life, inevitably, was really just suffering and death.

I kept this anxiety to myself as best I could. There was nothing to say anyway. No one could help. I was helpless, mortified, but aware that I was unable to do anything about it. The stress began to wear on my body. It felt worse and worse. I would have killed myself right there if death didn’t scare me even more than life. I reasoned if I killed myself at least this particular suffering would be over.

These feelings peaked and then went on, and on, and on. At some point, I took a drive with my family to a beach on the other side of the island. It was bad. My insides felt as if they were being torn out. I didn’t understand what was happening. I felt like vomiting but couldn’t. Finally, we arrived at the beach. I sat under a tree, in the shade, trying to act sane.

And then I thought I died.

Something happened and then nothing. And then there was something again. I don’t know. Was I dead? I looked around and realized I wasn’t. I was on the beach, under a tree. But there was no “I.” Everything was different. Everything had dropped off. Where was “I”? I didn’t exist. What was happening? What was this? It was indescribable. You couldn’t describe this. Any description was pointless. Everything was perfect just as it was, but at the same time, it wasn’t that. Because there was no everything. There was nothing at all. There was no need to describe anything ever again because there was nothing. Words and description were meaningless. Nothing was real. Nothing mattered!

And this was, undoubtedly, the best news possible. The greatest realization I could wish to have. Yet that couldn’t begin to explain how good this was. It was way beyond any conception I could come up with. Everything, and everybody, was saved. That was clear. Everything was fine–now and forever. Nothing needed to be done, ever. The whole thing–life, death, reality, individuality, good, bad, right, wrong–was a lie. An illusion. A sham. Everything just was–just is.

And this was perfection, beyond any belief, rationalization or label I could ever put on it. It made no sense, and it was perfect. It was before time itself. It transcended thought, was past my comprehension. Thought created all this suffering–and thought itself was not real. Without thought, all was grace–always. It was all blissfully and blatantly simple, yet totally illogical. I sat on that beach, thunderstruck. It was laughable. Whatever you thought, it didn’t matter. Thought had nothing to do with anything real. Everything was always perfect, no matter what you thought…

His Many Desiresby Ali Parker

I don’t fit into the world around me.

My brother and father are far more the billionaire type.

Art is what wakes me up. Expressing my soul through a paintbrush.

That and the beautiful woman that stole my heart years ago.

But she belongs to their world. An executive for the accounting firm my family runs.

And we live clear across the country from one another, but that doesn’t stop the way I feel.

Every time I see her, I want to change everything about myself until she takes notice.

Funnily enough, she doesn’t want me to change a damn thing.

She says that now, but when she finds out all that I desire of her, with her, she might not be so compliant.

Or maybe that’s what she’s been waiting on this whole time.

This is book 1 in a 3 book series. You will have to read book 2 and 3 to complete the story.

Flight 3108by Sharon Mikeworth

A terrifying plane ride into the unknown.

Mason Tucker, a passenger of American Skyways Flight 3108, en route from Florida to New Hampshire, believes he is headed home to his apartment and a cat named Bruno. But unbeknownst to him, the aging aircraft he is flying in will shortly be encountering severe weather, where it will be forced off course and sent directly over a mysterious section of ocean commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle.

There, buffeted on all sides by the treacherous elements, the plane encounters a strange vortex. Drawn in by it, Mason and his fellow hapless travelers can only hang on and struggle to survive as they are dragged out of their familiar world and propelled straight into the unimaginable.

"Just when you think you’ve figured out what will happen next, what new, uncanny obstacle will ignite another flame in Mason’s path, you discover how very wrong you were. The unknown and the known intersect to form new realities in this unique and unpredictable sci-fi thriller in which the past and the future are nearly indecipherable." — Jennifer Padgett, Seattle Book Review

Shards of A Shattered Soulby S.C. Stokes

After facing down the jaws of death and barely living to tell about it, Vera Sandrinas’ life is about to get a whole lot more dangerous.

With her dying breath, Vera pleaded with the Allfather for her life, and it was granted…in the form of Dragon’s Fire. Now a war has broken out in heaven, and Vera’s learning that divine mercy comes at a price.

The magic dividing the realms of the living and the dead is torn asunder, and as the undead rise, Vera must face a second death to seal the rift between between realms in time.

But if she fails, her debt will cost her more than she bargained for.

Fans of Raymond E Feist and David Gemmell will love S.C. Stokes’ Shards of a Shattered Soul, an arcane adventure full of mystical creatures and expansive fantasy worlds.