WordLink Authors M-R

CHRISTOPHER MANCUSO

Christopher Mancuso is unofficially the cat guy of Staten Island, NY. Over the past decade, this award-winning screenwriter has held leadership roles within rescue agencies while fostering over 300 cats in his home, now affectionately known as Hotel Mancuso. Christopher's passion for cats includes spreading the "felion" gospel by applying his trademark charm and humor to help others become informed and responsible cat owners—or as he would say: cat servants! An early pioneer in paranormal television, Christopher was the co-creator behind SCARED! (formerly Scared on Staten Island) and served as the Lead Investigator for the series. Most recently his satirical paranormal screenplay was awarded Best Short Script at the 2022 Boston Horror Comedy Film Festival. Other scripts by Christopher have won various awards at festivals nationwide.

YOUR HOUSE, THEIR RULES: Your Guide to Being Owned by a Cat (Debuts Fall 2025 from Sunbury Press) - An authoritative guide to life with a cat, with emphasis on rescue and adoption, infused with delightful true tales and the characteristic wit of a lifelong New Yorker.

Contact - Chip Rice

FRANK MCADAMS

The author holds an MFA from UCLA. For 3 decades he was an Adjunct Professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and a Senior Instructor, UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. McAdams’s Vietnam memoir Vietnam Rough Riders: A Convoy Commander’s Memoir (University of Kansas Press 2013) was nominated for Pulitzer Prize. He co-authored, Final Affair (Berkley True Crime, 2002) and authored The American War Film: History and Hollywood (Praeger Publishers, 2002); and he was a contributor to George Lucas’s Blockbusting (IT Books/HarperCollins, 2010). His honors include a Fulbright Specialist Scholar, University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, 2010; 2-time First Place winner of the Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Competition, and listed in Who’s Who in America, 2005-21.

CALIFORNIA RAIN (Blank Slate Press, Nov. 2024) - Los Angeles, 1950: When New York investigative reporter, Mike Foyle, learns that his World War II combat buddy, Bernie Crusher, is dead of an "apparent suicide" he immediately suspects foul play. Arriving in Los Angeles to replace Crusher, who was reporting on the subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Foyle is faced with a mountain of roadblocks in picking up a winding, murderous, trail that leads to a scandalous Hollywood statutory rape trial and a dark secret about a powerful Southern California family. With colleague Kitty Chandler, Foyle uncovers Crusher's last moments that point to the historic 1950 mid-term California elections. Set against the infamous Hollywood Blacklist, California Rain is a noir break from the stereotypical homicide police investigation with a "twist" ending.

TREASON’S TIME (Historical Fiction) - A political firestorm erupts during President Truman’s reelection campaign when Iva Toguri - a Japanese-American (born on the 4th of July no less) is identified as “Tokyo Rose” who made propaganda broadcasts on behalf of Japan during the war. Enter Captain Jim Geary, an US Army intelligence to interrogate Toguri. Geary soon learns that the US government is not seeking justice, but rather revenge. Both become victims, in separate ways, as they face a vindictive government, and media demanding blood—led by Walter Winchell, using his journalistic brand of vigilante justice.

Contact - Dean Krystek

DANIEL MESINO

The author is an external acquisitions editor for HarperCollins (Mexico) and runs a small company which promotes wellness through yoga and meditation. With 20 years of experience in the book industry, he has worked for companies such as Grupo Planeta and Pearson. He studied journalism at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and his articles have been published in several newspapers and magazines. He lives in Mexico City and participates in radio shows promoting literature and wellness. He has written three books about yoga and meditation.

(Writing as Dan Sam) - BUENOS DÍAS AVRIL, ¡ESTÁS EN DELHI! (Harper Collins, 2019) -Buenos días Avril, ¡estás en Delhi! holds wide appeal for fans of the Netflix show Sex Education, Glee, Gossip Girl, and Degrassi Next Generation. The novel deals with relevant topics such as bullying, racism, multiculturalism, terrorist attacks and the feelings of insecurity that many young people have begun to experience following the 2017 attack that happened at the end of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

Contact - Zeynep Sen

SETH MICHAELSON

Seth Michelson is an award-winning professor and poet specializing in state violence, incarceration, and the poetry of the hemispheric Americas. To date, he has published many works such as academic articles, book chapters, film and book reviews, essays, fourteen books of original poetry and poetry in translation. As Seth writes both in English and Spanish, his work has been published in countries such as Argentina, Mexico, England, Italy, Kenya, and India. Seth has taught at universities around the globe and thus has lived in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Puerto Rico. He has won many awards for his work as a teacher-scholar, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the US Library of Congress Award and the Pushcart Prize for Small Presses. He is currently the nominee from Washington and Lee University for the 2020 Virginia outstanding Faculty Awards. Seth has also recently been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2022, which he used to travel to Uruguay and continue his work with immigrants there

HOPE ON THE BORDER (Debuts Oct. 2025 from Church Publishing) Hope on the Border came to life as a result of Seth Michelson's personal experiences working at various immigrant detention centers, where he taught immigrant children poetry workshops as a way for them to cope with the trauma they had experienced at a very young age. He held his weekly poetry workshops in the most restrictive maximum-security detention center in the US for undocumented unaccompanied children, who were being housed in isolation cells. Children attending these workshops enabled Seth to provide them with a place where they could live as a mutually supportive community of creators, and not as prisoners of a cruel and dysfunctional system. While exploring the deeply personal and often grippingly intense stories of these incarcerated youths and immigrants, Hope on the Border delves into the lived tales of refugee children and women as they make their journey across the border, all too often fleeing harrowing circumstances. Meanwhile, the book explores the long history of immigration in the United States, thus exploring the real roots of the “land of the free”.

RENGO/CRIPPLE (Poetry) - Based on Seth’s own experiences growing up in a wheelchair, Rengo/Cripple is an exploration of a reality that on the outset looks to be very different to our own. And yet the poems in the collection portray the threads of a life that feel as familiar as they are distinct. The feeling of freedom that a disabled child can feel thanks to his wheelchair, the marginalization one can face in a myriad of scenarios on account of being visibly different, the simple wish to be able to live without pain. The collectionencompasses all this while creating a fragmentation in our reality to make way for a new one. Thus, the heartrending and startling collection adds to disability studies through poetry in ways that are uncommon, but much needed in terms of the current public archive of books on the interdisciplinary field.

Contact - Zeynep Sen

AMY MITCHELL, Esquire

Amy Mitchell is a Canadian-born, multi-award-winning author with an honors BA in English from the University of Toronto. She holds a JD from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and an LLB from the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. Mitchell practices family law and has received the Elite Lawyer award. She is also a Florida Supreme Court certified family mediator. From the moment she could put pencil to paper, she has been a passionate writer. When Mitchell taught a law class at a private high school, Belvin Perry Jr. was a guest speaker. The stars aligned for them to join forces and co-author this debut, true crime memoir, The Velvet Hammer.

THE VELVET HAMMER (Post Hill Press, Sep. 2024) - The Velvet Hammer is the gripping, true crime memoir of former Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who sentenced some of Florida’s most evil and notorious murderers to death, fulfilling his oath to uphold justice. Mitchell and Perry provide a clear, accurate description of America’s criminal justice system and explain why the death penalty can, and should, work and how it was applied to certain capital murder cases Judge Perry either prosecuted or presided over.

Contact - Dean Krystek

PAUL MONCRIEFFE & SHANE MAHONEY

Paul Moncrieffe and Shane Mahoney are television writers and sketch comedy partners from Ontario, Canada. Together they’ve worked on projects for PBS and Teletoon and have a series in development with Cartoon Network. Between them, they’ve written numerous pilots and a feature film. Shane has performed stand-up comedy for many years and is a published journalist. Paul studied at Second City before starting his career in cartoons.

GETTING THE GIRL: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO SEDUCTION, ALLUREMENT, AND BEGUILANCE BY ANDREW MUNGE -(Humorist Books, Feb. 2024) - As Airplane! was to the disaster movie, so is Getting the Girl a send-up of every so-called seduction manual ever written. Using the moniker Andrew Munge the authors have crafted the book as Munge’s manuscript, and by framing Munge’s first-person narrative around his manuscript, the advice book really serves as a detailed account of the fictional author’s disastrous life as “the world’s greatest pickup artist”. The authors hope that after reading Getting the Girl those who adhere to a misogynistic philosophy on romance and dating share Munge’s epiphany and stand up straight to spare their knuckles additional punishment.

Contact - Dean Krystek

DAN NORMAN

Dan worked in the wireless industry for more than three decades and holds seven U.S. patents. He has been a professional sales performance speaker, a monthly columnist for three sales & marketing magazines, and wrote a book on sales excellence. He has a BFA from the University of Georgia and is a past member of the board of directors of the Florida Literacy Coalition. He has had several short stories published and is the creator of a published comic strip. He is married and lives in Colorado. Penance is his debut novel.

PENANCE (Mystery) - A startup company invents technology that will revolutionize the consumer credit industry by eliminating both identity theft and the need for passwords. An illegal investment plan by three individuals to purchase controlling stock in the company is thwarted when one of the conspirators carelessly leaves documents detailing their scheme at a vacation beach house. Justin Sanders, a down-on-his-luck ex-Air Force and commercial airline pilot and recently released from prison is seeking to rebuild his life as he recluses himself in the beach house. His discovery of the documents offers him the opportunity to move forward. However, he soon learns that rather than the documents leading him toward a promising future, they most certainly are going to lead him to an early grave as the original investment trio unleash hired killers to reclaim their prize by eliminating everyone who has come in contact with the documents. Think Sheelah Kolhatkar’s Black Edge with insider-traders colliding with John Grisham’s Camino Winds.

Contact - Mira Perrizo

AMANDA OLSEN

As a child, Amanda Olsen took books in the tub, to the dinner table, and to family gatherings. She rode her bike to the town library and maxed out her library card on science fiction and fantasy. Once she was even locked in the library at closing time, lost in Greek myths. She won her first writing award at age nine. Connecting people with remarkable stories, vivid new worlds, and tangible characters is her lifelong pursuit. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and works as an editor and journalist.

MORE TODAY THAN YESTERDAY (MG Fiction) - After a mysterious cataclysm strikes an alternate near-future, two siblings must journey with their horses from Long Island to Maine—unsure if they’re the last of humankind.

Contact - Dean Krystek

MAY OSKAN

May Oskan was born and raised on Martha's Vineyard in a family of musicians and mechanics. She moved to San Francisco with two suitcases in 2010, and has since continued to make questionable choices all over the Bay Area, including living on a boat and leading a David Bowie tribute band. She holds a bachelor's in English and a master's in voice pedagogy, and now lives in Oakland, where she teaches voice and coaches creative people of all stripes. She also writes overly complicated pop music and moonlights as a jazz singer. 

A DREAM FOR A STRANGER (Contemporary YA) - Stuck in her best friend’s shadow and burdened by her traumatic past, Imelda Finch arrives at a San Francisco art school on a mission to reinvent herself, never imagining that psychic visions would be part of her new identity. While her newfound abilities help other people find their way, using them pulls Imelda deeper into her own unresolved wounds—the last place she expects to find healing. In a queer coming-of-age dripping with Northern California vibes, Oskan skillfully weaves Imelda’s psychic journey with her path to self-discovery, while examining themes of mental illness, friendship, first romance, and found family.

Contact - Chip Rice

ASLI PELIT

Asli Pelit is a journalist at The Athletic covering the NWSL, the US women’s national team and the business of women’s soccer. Most recently she was the Sports Deals Reporter at Sportico. Prior to joining Sportico, Pelit created short and long form visual stories for Voice of America in New York, for USA Today and “VICE” on HBO. From 2006 to 2014, Pelit was based in South America where she created, produced, and anchored “Continent of 10s,” a weekly documentary series focusing on soccer, business, politics and culture for TRT Sport. She has covered three Copa Americas and two World Cups, with a specific focus on how corruption affected host countries and their economies. She earned a B.A. in Journalism from NYU, M.A. in Latin American Studies from University Havana, she was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Journalism School in 2020 and is currently an MBA candidate at Columbia Business School.

CUBA’S CHILDREN OF CHERNOBYL (Current Affairs) (Debuts Spring 2026 from UNC Press) - From 1990 to 2006, Cuba treated 26,114 Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian victims, of which 23,000 were children. The project was a serious undertaking for Cuba during its harshest economic crisis. The Children of Chernobyl tells the riveting story of these children who lived in a small beach town resort in Havana that was converted into a living facility. Here their medical treatment, schooling, accommodations, clothing, and nutrition were taken care of by the Cubans, an extraordinary expense during the country's worst economic crisis. Written thanks to interviews conducted with survivors and ex-patients strewn across the globe, the doctors and patients that treated them personally and saved their lives and the diplomats that made the project happen, Cuba’s Children of Chernobyl is as necessary a book today as it is heartrending and sheds light on a page of history that has long stayed buried.

Contact - Zeynep Sen

OWEN PELL

Owen Pell is a retired partner of White & Case LLP, where he worked for 37 years. He has worked on a myriad of cases throughout his career, relating to World War II and the Holocaust, Apartheid South Africa, and African slavery in the United States. He was invited to be the only private lawyer on the US delegation to the 2009 Prague Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, which culminated in the signing of the Terezin Declaration, and has advised the U.S. government on issues surrounding Holocaust-looted art in Germany. Owen has spoken at a TEDx event at Binghamton University on "Diplomacy 2.0" where he discussed the changing nature of statehood and how human rights norms can be shaped by multinational companies working with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He is the president of AIPG (www.auschwitzinstitute.org), the largest NGO training government officials and implementing programs around the world designed to prevent genocide and mass atrocities and also serves on the board of the International Peace Institute (IPI; www.ipinst.org). He was awarded the Burton Award for Excellence in Legal Writing twice.

MOVING THE GOALPOSTS (Current Affairs) - Imagine asking the CEOs of major U.S. public companies to agree to intentionally and publicly break the laws of a country in which they are doing business. Such a plan would require those companies to incur costs that would eat into their profits, and risk business disruptions tied to flagrantly violating local law. It is fair to say that this proposal would be greeted with derision and would swiftly be rejected. Yet, this is not what happened in 1975, when civil rights leader Reverend Leon Sullivan asked all this and more of the largest American companies operating in South Africa by asking that they openly and blatantly defy Apartheid laws. At the time, nearly 300 U.S. companies had operations in South Africa and were employing over 60,000 Black workers.

How was Rev. Sullivan able to do this? Why did 300 of the most major U.S. companies agree to such a plan? Could such a feat ever be repeated? More importantly, what can we learn from the Sullivan Principles about how NGOs and major companies can work together moving forward? How can NGOs change how they communicate with donors about how to develop and manage corporate engagement and attain actual change and genuine results? These are the broad questions that Moving the Goalposts tackles and strive to answer.

Contact - Zeynep Sen

The Honorable Judge BELVIN PERRY JR

Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr. is a retired Chief Judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Orlando, Florida. He grew up in the segregated south as an African American, enduring the brunt of atrocious racism. He persevered, however, and accomplished an illustrious career as a no-nonsense prosecutor and judge. Judge Perry’s memoir is the quintessential true crime book and life story of a man who achieved the American dream despite of forces stacked against him. During his career as Chief Justice in Florida.

THE VELVET HAMMER (Post Hill Press, Sep. 2024) - Co-authored with Amy Mitchell, Esq., The Velvet Hammer is a gripping, true crime memoir of retired Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who sentenced some of Florida’s most evil and notorious murderers to death, fulfilling his oath to uphold justice. Perry provides a clear, accurate description of America’s criminal justice system and explains why the death penalty can, and should, work and how it was applied to certain capital murder cases he either prosecuted or presided over. Perry spares no details reconstructing the most brutal cases he has seen, and in doing so debunks Casey’s explanation for what happened to her daughter.

Contact: Dean Krystek

CONNIE PERTUZ-MEZA

A NYC public school educator for more than two decades, Connie’s work has been published widely, including in The Rumpus, Kweli Literary Review, Chalkbeat, Lunch Ticket, and Voices in The Middle, as well as in several anthologies. The author is a three-time VONA alum and board member, three-time Tin House participant, 2022 Aspen Word Ricardo Salinas Fellow, and Emerging Voices Pen America Fellow. Her early chapter book, Magic Outside My Window, was published by Scholastic in 2022 and later translated by the author into Spanish in 2024. Delores Dreams, inspired by her childhood in Brooklyn is her YA debut.

DELORES DREAMS (YA) - It’s 1994 and 15-year-old Delores Cadenas has never lived anywhere but Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a place where things are anything but calm between her father's drinking and her mother’s wild behavior. Dreaming of a future as a teacher, she seeks comfort in the arms of family friend and reputed bad boy David, who is no stranger to unstable households himself. But Delores’ already unstable world is turned upside down when she and David are caught in mischief and Delores is forced to travel to her parents’ native Colombia where her parents hope she’ll gain appreciation for sacrifices they made to give her a better life in the US.  

In Colombia, Delores falls under the spell of her cousin Francisco, whose mysterious rolls of cash, his flashy jewelry, and the gun tucked into his waistband gives her a deep understanding of how differently her life would have turned out if her parents hadn’t made the choices they had made. Finally able to see all that she has from her parents could very easily be lost, Delores discovers that she must define herself according to her terms and no one else's.

TEACHER JOURNEY - Life and Lessons of a Classroom (Memoir) - The author’s classroom stories, ranging from the absurd to the comical and from heartbreaking to infuriating. A mix of Educating Esmé: Diary of A Teacher's First Year by Esme Raji Codell, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, and Educated by Tara Westover, it is the story of a woman who initially joined the largest public school system in the nation not to save kids, as many were doing at the time, but to save herself. It is a behind the scenes look at the education system, exposing what is working and what is failing in education today. It draws on everyday scenes from the author’s near quarter of a century experience teaching and leaning on the very humor and vulnerability that helped her survive what it truly means to be a NYC public school teacher. She peels away the layers to give an honest look at a system bent on stripping all those in it, from students to teachers and to administrators, of their humanity. It is the story of how one teacher found her voice amidst the turmoil of public-school teaching where learning came secondary in a system fraught with inequities and government overreach while battling her own generational trauma and overwhelming sense of powerlessness and how she ultimately learned the power of transformational growth.

Contact - Zeynep Sen

AL PESSIN

Multi-award-winning author, Al Pessin, had a long career as a journalist—including seven years in the White House and Pentagon press corps and fifteen years as a foreign correspondent—which gives his novels verité that few others can match. His books deliver flawed heroes, three-dimensional villains, and plot twists that are all too realistic, enhanced by critiques from expert beta-readers in the military, law enforcement, and politics. He is the author of three previous novels (Kensington) and an award-winning play. Al has led writing seminars for Writer’s Digest and other outlets, and taught graduate-level journalism as an adjunct at Northwestern, his alma mater. He was featured in the Breaking In section of WD (May/June 2020) and the My Book page of Mystery Scene (summer 2020). Al blogs on writing for the Florida Writers Association.

BODY MAN (Thriller) - The novel is a dual first-person narrative told by Spencer, close personal aide (“body man”) to a senator who catapults to the presidency on a strong gun control platform, and Carl, a Marine Corps sniper with a bad conduct discharge who gets drawn into the militia movement and recruited to assassinate the new president. When the attempt goes horribly wrong, the president launches a war against the militias, sparking nationwide riots and mutinies in the military. As the president spirals into depression, Spencer takes on more responsibility and power than a Body Man ever should. By the end, one of them—the president, the marine, or the Body Man—is a national hero. Which one, depends on your point of view.

In the tradition of Gatsby, Grapes and Catch 22, Body Man takes a cold look at the hot mess of America today and shows just how much worse things could get if we let them. One person in the know calls it “a compelling, can’t-look-away train wreck of a thriller.” And it’s ideal for release during the 2024 presidential election season.

Contact - Mira Perrizo

NABILA RAMDANI

Nabila Ramdani is a French-Algerian writer from Paris who works as an academic, journalist and broadcaster, mainly covering France and the Arab and Muslim World. She began her award-winning journalistic career in the BBC Bureau in Paris and has since written extensively for publications ranging from the Guardian to the Daily Mail and Washington Post, while broadcasting for outlets including Sky News, Al Jazeera, and CNN. Educated at Paris VII University, Nabila holds an MPhil in British and American History and Literature, and an Agrégation—France’s highest teaching qualification—in English. She also has an MPhil in International History, specializing in the Middle East and North Africa, from the London School of Economics (LSE). Nabila first lectured at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the US, and then taught at Jesus College, Oxford University, in the UK.

FIXING FRANCE: HOW TO REPAIR A BROKEN REPUBLIC (Public Affairs, Sep. 2023) - A French-Algerian journalist, born and brought up in a neglected Paris suburb, offers unique insight into crisis-ridden France from a very different perspective than the establishment elites. France, the romanticized, revolutionary land with an enlightened historical mission—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for all—is failing its own citizens and its admirers around the world. How did the country get here, and what can be done about it? Nabila Ramdani assesses the fault lines in her struggling nation with unflinching clarity and originality. The critique is stark but provides real hope: the broken French Republic can and must be fixed.

Contact - Zeynep Sen

BILL RIVERS

Bill Rivers is a former speech writer for former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, traveling extensively and developing strategic messages in support of US national security priorities. Prior to the Pentagon, Bill held communications roles in the US Senate. His ghostwritten pieces have run in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He holds an MPA from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied as a Truman Scholar, and a BA in international relations from the University of Delaware. Recently, NBC has invited the author to write articles for its online opinion section.

LAST SUMMER BOYS - (Lake Union Publishing, Jun 2022) - Set in a small rural Pennsylvania town in 1968, the story follows irrepressible 13-year-old Jack Elliot’s naive quest to save his brother from the Vietnam War. Rivers crafts a lyrical narrative voice in Jack—which from the first page, pulls us into that late in the decade of social turbulence and a tragic distant war. It conjures up emotions of a time in our own lives when we began to explore the inconsistencies of the world around us. A time when we discovered there was so much about the world that we did not understand—a time when we began to question what we did understand. It was the last summer of our youth.

Contact - Dean Krystek

DANIELLE ROBERTSON

New Jersey native Danielle Robertson holds a BA in creative writing from SUNY Purchase and is a 2021 alum of the Tin House YA Workshop. Her short fiction for teens and adults has been published in anthologies by Once Upon a Book Club, Terrorcore Publishing, and Haunted Words Press. Across all genres, Danielle’s fiction tackles the messy emotions and universal complications of growing up.

BETWEEN ME AND MORGAN VALENTINE (YA Horror) - Thirteen years ago on prom night, high school senior Morgan Valentine went missing. Is the Jersey Devil to blame? True crime podcaster Natalie Bonello is determined to find out. Her crusade for answers leads to strained relationships and a prom nightmare of her own in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where the devil’s lore runs deeper than ever imagined.

Contact - Chip Rice

DR. BRYAN E. ROBINSON

Dr. Robinson has authored 40 academic and self-help books that have been translated into 15 languages, and he’s been published in such magazines as Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and Fortune. He has been interviewed by leading newspapers including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and TheLondon Times. He has appeared on ABC’s 20/20, discussing his research on the effects of workaholism on children, and has guested on numerous news programs including Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, NBC Universal, the CBS Early Show, and CNN’s Minding Your Money. Dr. Robinson is a regular contributor to Psychology Today, Forbes.com, and Thrive Global.

WAY DEAD UPON THE SUWANNEE RIVER (Level Best Books May 2024) - Reminiscent of The Help and Fried Green Tomatoes, this offbeat, fast-paced mystery blends humor and a dark plot, keeping you on the edge of your seat or making you fall out of it laughing as it witnesses beauty and brutality in a small Southern town, twisting, turning, and teasing to the surface one suspicion, one misunderstanding, and one murder at a time. The novel is the Winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award, the New Apple Award for psychological suspense, the Silver IPPY Award, Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Bronze Award, the USA Regional Excellence Book Award in the Southeast for Best Mystery, and finalist for the Silver Falchion Award

Contact - Dean Krystek

#CHILL - TURN OFF YOUR JOB AND TURN ON YOUR LIFE (William Morrow, Dec. 2018) - A month-by-month manifesto to tackling overworking. #CHILL contains year-long meditations, calming practical exercises, the ten commandments of self-care, and professional advice by a leading mindfulness expert. This is the ultimate guide to finding time to relax and live better. So, take a #Breath—#Chill!

Contact - Dean Krystek

SYLVIA RODMAN

The author’s life—including growing up in Chile; emigrating to Brazil; launching an advertising career in Los Angeles; marrying and raising three children in New York—is as fascinating as her fiction. She worked at Spanish International Network (SIN), where, as a pioneer in cable television, she was instrumental in the formation of Galavision, the first Spanish language premium pay service in the world and became its program director. A graduate of New York University, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild and has written and produced plays, won awards for her short fiction, and, in 2013, self-published her first novel, The Anglo Brambles, which introduced many of the characters featured in Of Spirits and Aromas (though this is not a sequel).

OF SPIRITS AND AROMAS (Literary - Magical Realism) - A brilliantly insightful novel of magical realism that explores the many nuances of multiculturalism – it dives into the perils of assimilation and cultural warfare, of commercialism and greed. Yet at the same time, it’s an entertaining, larger-than-life tale of simple people taking on an enormous existential task: holding fast to their ancient customs and culture even amongst those who would just as well erase them and everything they stand for.

As Sylvia describes it, “Just beyond the surface of the seemingly innocent comments made by practically all the characters throughout Of Spirits and Aromas, there lies the subconscious bigotry, or ignorance, we all have. And there’s the practically unavoidable presumption that your culture is superior to all others. Then there are the entanglements of religious beliefs and the influence of mythology generally used as fact. Having personally experienced this, I intend to bring it to light, not to scold or berate, but to help create a smoother path towards peaceful living. Too preachy? Perhaps, but it’s truly my deepest hope.”

CONTACT: Zeynep Sen