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A highly readable, intimate story about loss, aging, female friendship, family, and renewal...told with grit and humor. Lexi is a sixty-year-old widow whose solitary life is thrown into turmoil when a desperate young woman moves in with her, soon followed by the unexpected arrival of her best friend, who has separated from her husband of forty years. The mix of these three very different personalities - a powerful omnivore seeking to live life to the fullest; a sweet, self-denying vegan; and Lexi, a thoughtful, still grieving widow - leads to some surprising (sometimes humorous) situations that force Lexi to re-examine her life. In the physics of relationships, Lexi observes that nature abhors a vacuum. She begins to wonder if she herself has somehow manipulated her circumstances to fill that vacuum...simply to imitate the life she had before the death of her husband. "[The Physics of Relationships] was a joy to read. I loved the flow of the writing, the profundity of the observations, and the humor. You have truly sketched a very accurate, forgiving, and endearing picture of a woman at this stage of life. Thank you for writing this book." -Kaiya Cade Smith Blackburn "You did an amazing job writing so truly in the voice of an older woman.... I found Lexi's character appealing from the first page, and her consistent voice made her a very sympathetic, fully realized character. I particularly enjoyed her reflections on all she observed about human nature and the realities and absurdities of aging. She is kind, funny, curious, thoughtful, eager to puzzle out relationships. .... I enjoyed the twists and turns and tensions of the plot, three women living together, and the extra complication of Tasha [her daughter], and romantic partners, and the suspense of whether a myriad of small/large issues will get resolved." - Rosalyn Art

In 1967, the Summer of Love, 17-year old 'Buckles' Sinclair runs from her privileged home in Scarsdale to hitchhike to San Francisco, but instead of Flower Power, Peace, and Love she finds herself plunged into the darkest heart of the American nightmare. Her abandoned mother, KJ, rebuilds her identity and life in the company of a "family" of homosexual men--she is Wendy to The Lost Boys of Manhattan.

"Blow Up the Ashes, Vol 2 of American Mayhem, continues with the story of Pierre Doucet, a Cajun kid who during World War 2 hustles con games on the streets of New Orleans, a lethal world steeped in jambalaya, fancy women, sailors, and criminals. Pierre's skills enable him to become a professional gambler at illegal casinos, and then soon become a hired killer for the mob. When he seeks to escape that life, he finds it not simple to do. With the mob in pursuit because he knows too much, Pierre flees to New York. On a rainy day in a Greenwich Village bookstore a clerk looks vaguely familiar. The clerk is KJ, a girl Pierre last saw when she departed by railroad to college. They unite and together hope to find KJ's runaway daughter, Buckles. Buckles, KJ, and Pierre find each other in San Francisco where Buckles with Pierre's aid plans her revenge on the man who raped her seven years earlier."--

The year is 1950. A brutal racist attack drives Alfie Bagliato's family from their small town to New York City, where, at sixteen, Alfie dreams of escaping his Italian American enclave through a career in music and a romance with his distant cousin, Adeline. Soon enough, disappointment and frustration lead Alfie to join the military, to follow Adeline to San Francisco, and then to become a New York City cop, whose clash with protestors during the 1968 Columbia University student uprising nearly kills him, forcing him to confront his inherited bigotry and fear, as he wrestles with his lingering love for Adeline and need to find a new life.

"Jamison Everett, a shy and lonely man with few friends, is a retired high school English teacher. When his artist sister, Monna, who is suffering from Parkinson's Disease, calls and asks for his help, he reluctantly agrees to leave his apartment in Minneapolis and temporarily relocate to her remote Montana town. Perhaps, in caring for his sister, he will find the friendship he longs for. But Monna's fiercely independent husband, Ben, has a different game plan. Parkinson's has robbed Monna of her ability to paint, and if the doctors won't cure her, then by god he'll do it -- by sheer force of will. Jamison, summoning his courage, offers to help, and an alliance is born. Yet neither man can know how much their nascent friendship will ask of them. Only Monna senses what is coming."--