My heroine is a beautiful young lady, Chloe Blankson. The novel opens with her severe illness on her first birthday in a lonely and secluded part of town. Growing up, Chloe realised the slight deformity that will define her future. However, an encounter with the Saviour redefined her. As Chloe tried to relate with the growing lady she was becoming; she got convinced that finding true love was as complicated as her childhood insecurity. Chloe became increasingly disturbed with the aspects of her life that summon up her dark and undefined past. Despite her faith and career hopes, Chloe was unfulfilled and unhappy with the shallowness of life and struggled with her relationships. Finally, she realised that she was foolish to give up easily with her choices. Chloe is keen to redefine what love means to her with everyone that walked the shores of her world. Was she able to do so correctly? Did she find true love?

Set against the backdrop of an erupting volcano in New Zealand’s North Island, Lana wrestles with her recent grief, for survival on the mountain and her future with a man whose past she was once part of. Woven through her narrative is Alfred’s story and the theft of war medals, and which Lana finds herself enmeshed in, further threatening her life. Follow Lana as she tries to extricate herself from not only the mountain but her past.

Lana returned to New Zealand after the tragic death of her husband, Yuri. Both were musicians. Too painful to continue without him, she finds solace in her old school friend, Sarah, who inspires her to stay and take up geology. She settles into her new life and new love until she unexpectedly reunites with Paul, her first love. With that she is thrown into turmoil as she tries to reconcile the girl she once was with the woman she became.

Paul travelled the world studying volcanoes, devoting little time to his marriage, but he came home to study Mt Ruapehu’s lahar. His love for Lana never died and when he learns of her whereabouts he engineers himself back into her life.

Every day of his life Alfred tried not to think of his years spent in prison camps. Then some medals are stolen and he is inextricably thrown back to Monte Cassino. But as he follows the search for the medals he is pleased to add some excitement to his sedate retirement years until it comes at a cost, first to Lana and Paul, and then himself.

How well do we know Hitler? Is he mad? If so, is he still criminally culpable for his crimes? Assuming one accepts the existence of evil, is he evil?

If Hitler is a criminal, what about the acts of other leaders? Is Churchill equal to Hitler, when we note he starved three million Bengalis in 1943? Why is Churchill not also an immoral man for being the first leader to use chemical weapons post-1918? The French ultimately killed one million Algerians whose crime was to seek independence. The Americans dropped more bombs on Laos than all bombs dropped throughout World War Two. Is that not a crime too? But who thinks of LBJ and Nixon as mass murderers, on par with Hitler? Bush the father and son, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ensure over half a million Iraqis starved to death, thanks to the sanctions they imposed. Are they not mass murderers? If not, why is that?

If Hitler is mad, what about the significant number of Germans who fanatically followed him? Were they too mad? Can an entire nation be mad?

Why did the Allies conspicuously avoid disrupting Hitler’s Holocaust?

What about Hitler’s disciples – how do they explain their deeds?

This novel is an interrogation of the mind not only of Hitler, but of his fanatic disciples who carried out mass murders on a daily basis and who were on the surface ‘normal’ men and women.

The living mind is vast and unexplored, like the depths of the deepest forest it harbours the strange and unusual.
Some are beautiful like the first flowers to emerge after the harsh winters but others are cruel and unforgiving, the serpent of Eden, and lurks within cracks and crevices waiting to reveal itself.
We build the cages to contain them but the lock is easily rusted away until the beast within is unleashed to wreak havoc upon our souls.
Thus we will weep upon our tarnished hearts and watch as what we once cherished sinks with the sun unto the waveless lake.
Spurned and without aid or a kind hand to guide we fall from virtue into damnation…

The journey into a breaking mind. ‘Of Virtue and Damnation’ takes readers inside the life of a young priest tasked with looking after a dying Marchioness, while dealing with her husband, his difficult ways and fierce grudge against the clergy. A stark discovery is made, as readers are forced to confront the pits of adversity.

SONDER is a collection of poetry about the internal conversations we all have, where “the mind gossips about the heart deeds”. The honest thoughts about being lost and found, motivational conclusions from it, raw feelings about love and life, the learning part of it, the direct talks about modern times and its missing basics. The book has four chapters with a changing mood throughout them to take readers for a journey of openness through words.

This book is about a young man named Robert who chronicles a poetic diary about his struggles through childhood of having a drug addicted mother and a deadbeat father. He is working his way through life learning a lot of rights and wrongs while being a role model to his younger brother. There’s one man who cared about him and his well-being, his guidance counselor Mr. Marble who molds him into a better man, is a role model to him and shows him a better way of life. Through the trials and tribulations of life, Robert chronicles his thoughts and experiences on various issues such as family, love, relationships, his neighborhood and growing into the man he wants to be. This book shows that men struggle in life and that sometimes we all need an ear to listen, a talk to clear our minds, a heart that is kind and warmth to comfort our souls. Robert finds a purpose in life for himself after the mistakes he’s made and he wants to prove to his family that the cycle of pain can be broken and that needing help and guidance from others doesn’t make him weak, it only makes him mentally stronger. A book that everyone will enjoy from beginning to end.

A baseball player, a fisherman – a young man looking for answers.

Perhaps no pursuits stir the passions of dreamers and poets like baseball and fly fishing. For Nick Grimes, a small town kid with big dreams, these two pastimes and sports are more than pursuits of the soul, they are means to an end. Or so he thinks.

We first see Grimes as a talented pitcher and a cocksure young man with his sights firmly set on a Major League baseball career. With his blazing fastball he uses to zip past hitters, his destiny as a big league ballplayer seems inevitable. He’s barely out of high school when he signs a professional contract to pitch for the Detroit Tigers organization. But when the minor leagues prove to be tougher than what he bargained for, he finds himself out of baseball and learning life’s hard lessons.

Whether fishing for trout in the mountains of Pennsylvania or learning about love, Grimes is a young man chasing happiness, his place in the world. He’s a man who must live life on his own terms, but does he know what he really wants?

Rejecting conventional jobs, Grimes embarks on a different life, that of a fishing guide. But he’ll find happiness to be an elusive creature, and the people he meets along his remarkable life journey will teach him some of its most valuable lessons.

There’s the woman writer with her own dreams, her own ambitions, who captures Grimes’ heart. His father, who gave up his own dreams to remain a factory worker, and a pitching coach who sees something special in Grimes, urge him to take second chances. But perhaps the most unforgettable character is Sir, Jon, a mysterious fly fisherman leading a Thoreau-like existence in the mountains, who offers him life’s most important lesson. His brief encounters with Sir Jon are wake-up calls for the young man, and will provide readers with some of the most unforgettable moments of this remarkable story.

Nick Grimes will learn all about love and sex, death, despair and dashed dreams, but perhaps most of all, hope and rejuvenation.

With echoes of A River Runs Through It and The Rookie, this short novel by Mike Reuther goes beyond the coming-of-age story and will have have readers cheering, perhaps shedding a tear or two. Baseball Dreams, Fishing Magic is the story of a young man chasing the American dream on baseball fields, on trout streams, in bar rooms. More than just another baseball book, it’s a fishing tale, a love story – a romance of the soul.