The Third Daughter

Rome, 68 BCE.

Julius Caesar begins his controversial career in government.

At the same time, a third daughter, Tertulla, is born to the Junius family on the Palatine Hill.

Tertulla grows up under the guidance of her brother, Marcus Brutus, and her mother Servilia.

When Tertulla discovers that her mother is Caesar’s mistress, she begins to wonder who her father might be. Frustratingly, she has more questions than answers.

As Rome descends into a civil war, the young woman realises how compromised and conflicted her mother is – torn between Caesar and the old Roman nobility.

After the civil war, Caesar stands victorious. Rome – and Tertulla – look to find some peace.

But her brother is at the heart of a dangerous conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.

The fate of Rome, and Brutus, stand at the crossroads at the Battle of Phillipi.

From the ashes of the Republic an Empire is born.

Tertulla, enduring grief and tragedy, still asks the question – was Caesar her father?

Rome’s End

45 B.C.E. Rome is under a Dictator.
Caesar has won the final battle of a bloody Civil War, and Romans are ready for peace.

So, when Lucius Sestius Quirinalis, an aspiring lawyer, is called into his father’s study one autumn morning, he is thinking of nothing more than the family’s latest case.

The charge against the historian Sallust is his corrupt rule in Roman Africa. But it is his research into the twenty-year-old Catilinarian Conspiracy which is proving unsettling for some.

The Sestius family are alarmed when their friend Caecilius is killed in mistake for Lucius. Their involvement in the case has brought murder to their own house, and Lucius is in danger.

With the aid of Cornelius Rufus, an informant from the Subura slums, Lucius goes into hiding. His mistake is to travel to Hippo Regius where Sallust was governor.

With nowhere left to hide, Lucius risks a return to Rome and a confrontation with Caesar.

In the aftermath of the Ides of March, his questions will be answered.

Caesar, it seems, was not the only one to suffer a betrayal.

Recommended for fans of Steven Saylor, David Wishart and Peter Tonkin.

Resurrecting Rain by Patricia Averbach 

Deena’s house is being auctioned off at sheriff’s sale and her marriage is falling apart. As her carefully constructed life unravels, her thoughts return to the New Moon Commune outside Santa Fe where she was born, and to Rain, the lesbian mother she had abandoned at fourteen. No one, not even her husband and children, know about New Moon or that she sat Shiva for Rain in exchange for living in her Orthodox grandmother’s house in an upscale suburb of Cleveland. Deena’s story unfolds with empathy and wit as a cascade of disasters leaves this middle aged librarian unmoored from her home and family, penniless and alone on the streets of Sarasota, Florida. The novel is populated with deftly drawn characters full of their own secrets and surprises–from Deena’s blue haired freegan daughter who refuses to tell her parents where she lives, to the octogenarian TV writer who believes that crows are the reincarnated souls of Jews lost in the Holocaust. Deena loses her house, but will she find a home? Maybe the crows know.

Resurrecting Rain explores the unanticipated consequences of the choices that we make, the bonds and boundaries of love and the cost of our infatuation with materialism. At its heart the novel is a tale of loss and redemption, a reevaluation of our material culture and an appreciation for the blessing of friends and family. It demonstrates that sometimes you have to lose everything before you find yourself.

Painting Bridges by Patricia Averbach

Here is a novel set in rural New York and Cleveland, Ohio treating the recovery from grief of a young woman, Samantha, who has lost her husband and young daughter. She finds herself alone in a big house until company comes to call in the person of a young deaf child. It’s a story of loss and recovery.

Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love by Colin Bell

It’s 1967 and the start of the Summer of Love. Life will never be the same again for the young as they celebrate liberation and nonconformity, but also protest against prejudice, repression and war. In Brighton, Stephen Dearsley is tempted and intimidated by the way his generation is casting off traditional ways of dress along with the old ways of thinking. His hippy housemate Dys provides an open door into his own possible summer of love, but will autumn still find him in tweeds, or will he be in colourful loons and tie-dye? His ambition to become a biographer is fulfilled when he’s commissioned to research the life story of Austin Randolph, and the revelations of hypocrisy, class prejudice and homophobia lead him to make his decision.

Blue Notes, Still Frames by Colin Bell

Colin Bell transports us back to Brighton in 1994 for his second novel Blue Notes, Still Frames, with a full cast of characters drawn together through the music and photography of the title.

Busker Joe lives on the beach with his flute and his troubled Goth girlfriend, Victoria, who’s a singer. He borrows a bath towel for her from Rachel and Alan, a prosperous young couple from the rapidly growing world of computers. The meeting will change all their lives… and other lives too.

There’s Harry, a beach bum drummer; Nico, a transient American who takes revealing photographs of passers-by; Kanti and Diep, mysterious artist twins from Nepal; Lionel and John who reveal more than their bodies on the nudist beach; and pub landladies Jacqueline and Rosemary who top up their income by dabbling in the sex trade.

Joe is always there, somewhere, weaving more than melodies with his flute.

Vision Pages for Creative Writers by Barbara Jacksha 

What if you could elevate your writing process and enjoy writing a lot more? What if you could zoom ahead with your writing projects with greater confidence, clarity and ease? What if you could do all this and more in just a few minutes a day? You can, by writing vision pages!

Vision Pages takes journaling to the next level. When you write vision pages, you focus on what you want to have, do, be and experience. It’s like creating a vision board, but instead of relying on other people’s words and images, you create with your own hand, using your own words, and write from your own inner wisdom and heart.

Writing vision pages is both an immersive journaling experience and a fun, empowering process that can transform you and your writing life.

The Vision Pages journal briefly describes the four key steps to writing vision pages and imagining your writing dreams to life. The journal includes some writing prompts to get you started. The rest of the book is yours to fill with your own life-changing visions.

Character Slam Book by Emerian Rich 

This Character Slam Book is the perfect tool for fiction writers of any genre. Fill in this book so you have all the stats on your characters and world in one place. This workbook will help you ask the right questions and keep all your character attributes straight. The world-building section will facilitate the building of your world so you will know all those answers before the readers ask them. A must-have for novelists and invaluable for series writers.

When Roses Weep by Susan Agatha Davis

Revenge, corruption, love, rape and murder are woven into a tapestry of intrigue against the backdrop of Las Vegas. Attorney Fran Simone never thought of herself as a murderer until she thought about her estranged father, Mayor Max Simone. Lately, she’d been thinking about him a lot. When Max starts calling her repeatedly, she is willing to do anything to drive him out of her life – until she learns just how much revenge can cost. The setting is Las Vegas, where the best laid plans end in murder, where a dead police woman and a deranged child killer pit Fran against her childhood demons, where family secrets lead to deadly outcomes, where love is never where you look for it, and where it’s sometimes hard to recognize the good guys. Revenge isn’t always sweet.

Saynte and Sinners by Susan Agatha Davis

Men like Rick Brandt don’t come from kind wombs. He had been a Marine, a vagrant, a gangbanger, a drug addict, and a bounty hunter, and now he’s a private investigator. He can kill without mercy and lie without blinking. He crawled out of the pain of his life and, faced with a pregnant lover, he must choose between having a reason to die and having a reason to live.
When Rick and his friend Tom Sadler go back to Rick’s hometown of Philadelphia to rescue an heiress, Rick is pitted against a brutal and sadistic nemesis, a haunting past and his own failures. Caught up in the pain of his memories, he makes a fatal mistake that lands him in the hands of his enemy. Bound and tortured, he is compelled to taste death. Mortality is a bitch.