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--Active Projects--
We are pleased to present an assortment of superb fiction and nonfiction properties. Our fiction properties range from science fiction to historical fiction and suspense/romance. We are actively screening submissions in virtually any genre'. All of the books listed here are available for publication. Publishers or their representatives desiring additional information on any of these projects please contact Rebecca.
--Fiction--
THE DEVIL MADE ME . . . .   by Stephen Tobias.  Everyone knows that Satan collects souls, but his other passion is to amass a fabulous art collection. Much of the art that has been lost or stolen over the ages now hangs on the walls in his “Museum of the Lost.” His claim that his is the only collection free of fakes and forgeries is undisputed. When rumor of a previously undocumented Vermeer, appropriated by Nazi Air Marshal, Herman Goering in the closing days of WW II reaches him, Satan sends his chief demon curator; Renaissance sculptor, Pietro Tacca to buy it from a dying war veteran who has it hanging on his wall in Houston, Texas.
Pietro returns with the painting which has been damaged by years of neglect in a bombed out farm house basement and Satan (AKA-Staggs, Stagger Lee) picks an innocent New York painter to do the restoration; hoping to obtain her soul and the painting both in one fell swoop. It is only when Pietro takes one look at her and falls madly in love that Satan’s plans go awry; as everything Pietro does to make the artist suffer backfires and Satan can see the painting slipping out of his grasp. Add a Capuchin monkey that is the artist’s guardian angel, an Israeli Mossad agent trying to repatriate the painting to its original owner, and a rapacious demon with fetal alcohol syndrome anxious to score points with the boss and, as they say in Hollywood-hilarity ensues.

[Approximately 80,000 words, Manuscript Completed]
EMERSON'S HOME by Wendy Fiore.  When Emerson LaMonica, an over-achiever working as an archivist in New York City, suffers a brutal rape her stable life and self-assuredness falls apart.  Added to that devastation, the death of her beloved grandfather becomes the proverbial last straw.  She retreats back to her grandfather’s farm in Vermont in the hopes to regain some semblance of her old life.  Will her little town, with her childhood love and home, hold enough charm and magic to heal her broken spirit and life?  It will take a hunt for an old painting’s history to tie Emerson’s broken life back together again and show her what she needs in her life…friends, family, and love.
[Approximately 75,000 words.  Manuscript Completed]
A FORTUNE IN LIES by Jason Carter is the story of 34 year old Eric Matthews who is catapulted into a race against time after learning of his wife, Michelle’s, abduction and her abductor’s plot for a twelve-hour ransom recovery. Forced to stay inside a strict set of boundaries to ensure his wife’s safety, Eric’s actions are not only impossibly daring, but also under constant surveillance. Meanwhile, when two Long Beach detectives, Wallace Trimble and Jonathan Childress, begin their investigation into the untimely death of a young woman, the question of whether or not she could be Eric’s wife is raised. The story of love, trust, betrayal and murder, A FORTUNE IN LIES an adrenaline-pumping rollercoaster that will rocket you through plot twists and turns and keep you guessing from beginning to end.
[Approximately 90,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
THE GOLDEN GLEAM; Fantasy fiction by Pam Chillemi-Yeager.  is the story of Rick Dearborn, a cynical mental health worker, and Rubilee Gardner, the enigmatic, bi-racial clairvoyant he meets and marries after a whirlwind romance.  Their wedded bliss is quickly thwarted when  Rubilee miscarries during a frightening supernatural event.  Shortly after, Rick's favorite client, Ray Antonelli,  takes off, leaving behind a  map, and a note stating that he is going to meet space creatures. Finding evidence that the two events are related,  Rick and Rubilee, along with Rubilee's two colorful aunts and a coon dog with a fondness for baying at the moon are off on a cross country quest to find answers, as well as the missing Mr. Antonelli.  From the lush farmlands of PA to the beauty of Nag's Head and ultimately a tribe of Goddess worshippers in the Marble Desert, THE GOLDEN GLEAM is filled with contemporary fantasy, humor and suspense. 
[Approximately  71,000 words. Manuscript Complete]

THE HAND OF OSIRIS by Frank Cavallo. 1879. Bounty hunter Jacob Hatcher has pursued the outlaw Jedediah Sykes from the Texas prairie to the deserts of the Arizona Territory.  On the verge of capture, Sykes escapes into a valley that Hatcher’s Apache guides refuse to enter, warning that the lands are cursed by an ancient, nameless evil.  The trail leads him to a town, a dark paradise of sin and vice called Gehenna.  Though gambling and gunfights rule the day, no one in Gehenna ever dies.  Unless everyone in Gehenna is already dead.  Hatcher and Sykes soon find themselves entangled in the mysteries of Gehenna’s peculiar denizens – a pale dandy, a fire & brimstone Jesuit preaching to a city of lost souls, and a shadowy figure who rules over the town like a living god.  When one of them makes a choice that threatens to damn them all, the rest must work together, confronting not only their own demons, but the hidden horrors of Gehenna itself, to find a stolen key that can unlock the domain of the dead.

[Approximately 100,000 words. Manuscript Completed]

THE JEWISH JOURNEY by Sheldon Cohen. From the 1840's to World War II, The Bauemler family of Germany are leading academics who attempt to weave their anti-Semitism into German political and cultural life. During the same period, the Tepper family of Eastern Europe struggles with evolving Jewish thought and anti-Semitic forces that adversely impacts their very existence. In Germany, between the World Wars, Max Tepper and Erich Baeumler play football on the same boy’s team. Max becomes the target of anti-Semitism at a very young age. Erich, personifying Hitler’s dream of the perfect German, joins the Hitler Youth at the age of ten. Their lives take opposing turns. Max becomes a Jewish partisan fighter and devotes his life to the destruction of Nazism, while Erich, an officer in the Wehrmacht, eagerly proves his devotion to the Fuehrer by his heroic war-time exploits. But on a battlefield on the Russian front, the two come face-to-face again. Will good triumph over evil, or will the bonds of a long-ago friendship remain steadfast and true.

[Approximately 100,000 words.  Manuscript Completed]
LEFT LUGGAGE by Geoff Nelder contains a shattering original premise. The concept of memory is examined as the part it plays in making us who we are. From space is brought a suitcase-size object that fundamentally affects memory. A few escape its invidious consequences and attempt to secure a future. Dangerous, yet sometimes humorous action takes us from orbit in the International Space Station to an apparent sanctuary in a remote valley in Wales. Frantic desperation in a US town rips at our sensitivities, but relief for a man when he finds his own refuge in Canada. In spite of or because of the danger, lustful romances drive the main characters as much as survival threatens their existence. “Geoff Nelder's LEFT LUGGAGE has the right stuff. He makes us ask the most important question in science fiction--the one about the true limits of personal responsibility”. - Brad Linaweaver.
[Approximately 108,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
NEVER FOREVER, by Judy Light Ayyildiz, Forced out from the western provinces of the weakening Ottoman Empire and into the heart of Anatolia and the establishment of the new Turkish Republic, Adalet embodies both the dreams and struggles of the 20th century woman. She is disowned for her love. She fights for the new ideals of tomorrow and for her children. She is engendered by war and an era that gave Turkish women a secular voice even before much of the west. But she never is able to buck the traditions and dilemmas faced by a woman determined to own her independence.  Adalet was born into the grace and education of high Ottoman society, where European ideals fostered the uprising of the Young Turks. She is one of the many builders, wives and mothers of the new state whose bold pride secured a revolution. As Adalet's life folds dreams into deception, love into rejection and birth into loss it is her inner strength, a spirit forged in both East and West that stands down and rebuilds.
[Approximately 90,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
OUTSIDER, by Stephen Tobias. Nathan Lerner, photographer and art professor has been unable to work since the loss of his daughter to leukemia and the subsequent break-up of his marriage. He keeps his lack of creative output secret, re-cycling his old negatives and sleep walking through his days. When an elderly tenant in a building Nathan owns moves into a nursing home, Nathan goes to clean out his apartment and finds a vast collection of original art done by the reclusive and disturbed ex-janitor, Herman Vireck. The art, done on cheap sketch paper with Woolworth water colors and using sophisticated techniques of collage and blending of sacred and profane images will eventually be recognized as the work of an obsessive genus and effect the work of hundreds of contemporary artists. For Lerner the discovery of Herman’s work sends him on a tortuous journey into the nature of his own creative sensibility and to the dark secrets surrounding his daughter’s hidden relationship with “crazy” Herman.

OUTSIDER is loosely based on the life of outsider artist Henry Darger, about whom little is actually known. It is hoped that through this fictional exploration of the imagined relationship between Nathan and Herman an emotional satisfying conclusion can be brought to some of the questions that surround this disturbed and elusive genius.

(Approximately 100,000 words.  Manuscript Complete)

A PLACE TO BE FREE by Hugh Mannfield is set in a future where machines have become an extension of the mind, scientists have learned how time assumes physical form, and humans are migrating into space. In this future, antigravity technology is transforming the moon into a living world and setting the stage for a technological clash that will violently reshape civilization.  When off world ballots are thrown out in the US presidential election down on Earth, the colonies revolt. Some of the rebels have more in mind than independence and in order to prevent global devastation, Captain Jack Hawkins, and Specialist Amanda Yeager must track a band of rebel extremists who have stolen an antigravity field generator beyond Mars to the asteroid mines on Ceres. Along the way they learn the explosive hidden truth about antigravity fields, secrets of space-time manipulation that Albert Einstein may have taken to his grave.
[Approximately 100.000 words. Manuscript Completed]
THE PROMETHEUS GATE by Frank Cavallo.  After more than four decades behind bars, notorious serial killer Al Grimsby stages an inexplicable escape.  Christina Falcone, the FBI’s top behavioral analyst, is assigned to hunt him down.  Her investigation leads her into a maze of conflicting clues: secret government experiments, legends of lost gods and an archaeologist named Carter McAlester—who works for a shadowy organization with their own agenda.  From the streets of Berlin to the ruins of Babylon they race to find a legendary artifact that may hold the key to an unspeakable power—a power that Al Grimsby may already possess, and which may have driven him mad.  Plagued by nightmares and dark visions, they must discover the truth before Grimsby can finish his bloody work.  Before the Prometheus Gate can be opened.
[Horror.  Approximately 120,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
THE PUZZLE BOX by Chris C. Ewing. A chain of bizarre events is set in motion when geologist Thomas McEwen discovers an intricately-carved wooden box in the mountains of Wyoming. No one seems to know what is inside the sealed box but many are willing to go to great lengths to find out. When a university professor is murdered for researching the artifact, the Abbess of a mysterious rogue church in the mountains offers Thomas sanctuary. Caught in over 100 years of eerie destiny, Thomas races to find the ancient truth before he becomes yet another victim of the PUZZLE BOX.
[Approximately 71,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
SUCH SWEET THUNDER: The Woman who Loved Beethoven by David Ryback.
Sometimes a man’s hidden secrets are best understood by the woman who loves him most deeply.  This is the story of Beethoven's life as seen through the eyes of his immortal beloved.  Hers is  the voice that sets up the narrative, with all the passion that reverberates with his powerful music. It takes the reader through the life of Beethoven, based on a memoir that he leaves for her after his death.  The memoir is intermingled with her own remembrances of this immortal love for the ages.
[Approximately 85,000 words.  Manuscript Completed]
THE TWINS by Sheldon Cohen.  The Nazis have assumed power in Germany. A brilliant theoretical and experimental German physicist has discovered the secret of nuclear fission and the nuclear bomb and is prepared to assure Adolf Hitler control of the world. Who is this physicist? Can he be stopped? The intelligence services of two nations combine to kill or capture this physicist. There is one chance. What is there about his past that can be used to stop him? The future of the world hangs in the balance.
[Approximately 70,000 words. Manuscript Completed.]
UNDER LOW SKIES is another adventure from Ed Teja with the exotic background of the Southern Caribbean and South America to add spice. The action-oriented adventure murder mystery is peopled with interesting and likable characters.
[Approximately 80,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
THE VAMPIRE LOVER'S COOKBOOK by Pam Chillemi-Yeager.  Bram Stoker would never have imagined his seminal work would create such madness. For here in the new millenium, vampires are all the rage. Girls swoon, boys scoff, and the sometimes secretly smitten adults fund it all. But has anyone ever wondered how this pop culture phenomenon plays out in real ife? THE VAMPIRE LOVER'S COOKBOOK, a Young Adult novel of first love,  loss and today's complex  family dynamic does just that. All fourteen-year-old Cal wants to do is play football. When he accidentally breaks a church window, he and his friends are corralled into a mortifying church cooking class. Enter one Nikki Sixx Morganstien, the sultry teen clutching the Sunset vampire books to her chest. Sparks fly as the class progresses, culminating in the frightening kidnapping of Cal's young neighbor.  Featuring first love, blended families, rock and roll, sexuality, religion and the power of friendship and forgiveness against the backdrop of small town USA, THE VAMPIRE LOVER'S COOKBOOK tells a beguiling story  which also shows how pop culture shapes each generation.
[Young Adult, Approximately 75,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
WHO IS MISTER I? by Robert VanDeventer is an adventure/intrigue novel that anticipates coming detente with Cuba in the atmosphere of that much maligned business – used cars. Huge, erudite Fred Burns is a former smack-down wrestler and recent drama critic who insists that he merely sells vintage cars – Hudsons, Packards, and Cords.  But federal agents and Roger Deerman, world’s largest car dealer, insist that he is also the mysterious Mr. Iconoplast, Philly’s arcane image maker. When Burns learns that Deerman is selling cars in Cuba, he knows more than is healthy for him, and he’s framed for murder. Within hours, Deerman, the feds, and local cops want him, dead or alive, and Burns is on the run all over south Jersey in all sorts of vehicles. He’s dumped in the bay, blasted into the Delaware River, and winds up chased by an elephant. On the way, he deals with assorted thugs, Deerman, who doesn’t mean to sin – “But the profit!” –  daughter Nell who is a caustic coed, and a blonde bombshell who’s more mysterious than he is. As Burns the car dealer might put it, the whole book is one tight and fast cream puff.
[Approximately 72.000 words. Manuscript Completed]
WORDS OF GRACE by Pam Chillemi-Yaeger is the story of one woman's journey back to her hometown, the calamities of her lively Italian family, as well as the heartbreak of first love, family secrets and the surprising danger facing old friends in small-town USA.
[Approximately 80,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
XAGHRA'S REVENGE; Magic realism fantasy. XAGHRA'S REVENGE by Geoff Nelder, follows the fate of a sixteenth century abducted family, and of two contemporary lovers thrown together by the ancients. Reece and Zita are unaware that one descends from the pirates, the other from the abducted family. While the Gozo spirits seek revenge, so do the Ottoman Corsairs, who intend to roll back history, and this time win the siege of Malta.
[Approximately 90,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
--Nonfiction-
AN ACCIDENTAL PRISONER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE ; A memoir/black comedy, by John J. Reiner. When a strait-laced attorney is jailed for a crime he didn’t commit, he must use his background in psychology, sociology, pediatrics, and, especially, his sense of humor to first thwart and ultimately befriend his fellow inmates and the jail staff, who, thanks to Erin Brockovich, peg him as “the enemy” and use malevolent and comical methods in their attempts to wreak havoc upon him and explode his “good time” release credits to maximize his jail term and prevent him from returning to his home and family until the latest possible date.
[Approximately 90,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
THE COMING HEALTHCARE REVOLUTION by Sheldon Cohen.  Medical errors kill 98,000 patients per year in the United States. You, the patient, can play a crucial role in not becoming part of this statistic. The coming healthcare changes that will be implemented over the next ten years will make the patient’s role more crucial then ever. You will learn the important details about a complete medical examination including a medical history, physical examination and screening laboratory data; risk factor analysis for the major diseases; health screening; symptoms that must never be ignored; and how to take charge of your health. Once confident about your personal health information you will be in a position to minimize medical errors and live a longer and healthier life.
[Approximately 90,000 words.  Manuscript Completed]
HEY DOC: REVELATIONS OF A MODERN FAMILY DOCTOR by Richard Bowles, MD. Dr. Bowles, with his patients' permission, shares his amazing and intimate dealings with them.  He was there.  He spoke with them.  He touched them.  He spoke with family members.  They trusted him, or they didn't.  Things worked out well, or they didn't.  He was sued.  The reader is invited on one fantastic life adventure after another.
[Approximately 75,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
A GUIDE TO THE PSALMS OF DAVID (A Book for All Reasons) by Steve Rosner is a resource for an individual—of any faith—who is suffering and/or directionless: To help him/her find solace, direction, receive a new awareness and/or be transformed. One that will result in healing and/or reconsideration of one’s personal ethics—to become more inclined to clean hands and a pure heart.. Highlighted by a detailed taxonomy  that—using modern data base technology—classifies each of the 150 Psalms within four major categories  (For Whom Intended, Purpose, Theme, Mood), it allows the reader to quickly find the right psalm at the time of greatest need. Additionally, the book contains, but is not limited to, a deeply felt, yet eminently readable,  English translation of all 150 psalms, not based upon a particular religious belief or practice, but attempting to convey the human condition and engage the reader’s soul.
[Approximately 90,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
HOW VIDEO GAMES SAVED MY LIFE by Benjamin S. Dutka.  A memoir, dating from the first moment a young child of four grasped the unfamiliar plastic stick in his hands, which shows how video games have had an overwhelmingly positive influence on an otherwise typical life.  The gaming industry has long since been misunderstood; as far as the media and many parents are concerned, such a hobby can only have a negative impact.  But in looking back, the author recalls the moments when gaming enriched his life: virtues rather than vices, conventional, old-fashioned beliefs in the form of duty-driven heroes and heroines, nearly unparalleled creativity and imagination that prompted the very same traits within a young, developing mind, etc.  Could video games really give birth to such crucially important elements of human decency?  Once we reach the end of the candid, emotional memoir, filled with the short story events of a wide-eyed kid who continues to be a wide-eyed adult, everyone will know the answer.
[Manuscript Nearly Completed]
JUSTICE FOR ONE AND ALL? The story of Jane Gagliardo vs. Connaught Laboratories, by Sherry Karasik. (Summary coming soon.)
[Approximately 75,000 words.  Manuscript Completed]
STUMP CITY CHRONICLES--MEMOIR OF A BLUE COLLAR KID is Robert J. Porter Jr.'s journey through the life he was handed, and made for himself.  It is a wry, yet poignant look at blue-collar family life as it was in the 1950's and 60's in small town America, which was influenced by the blessed trinity of church, school and tavern.  STUMP CITY describes life during the era of black and white TV's with rabbit ears antennas, the imminent invasion from illegal aliens from Mars, who somehow became Mexicans just a few years later, entering puberty in the absence of biological instruction, thus, his first time (with a partner), though memorable, was also forgettable.  He found out early that his town expected blind obedience to the Republican Party, and later, despite  having 25% of his DNA derived from Mohawk Indian blood, this did not insure the safe operation of a canoe.
[Approximately 70,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
THIS IS NOT ABOUT BASKETBALL by Tom Morgan.; A Boy finds his voice; an Old Man finds renewal and purpose.
Daniel, a little boy, is rescued from a serious malady - in part because of his uncle’s urgings.  Twelve years later the uncle intervenes again.  At 65, with a faulty heart, he builds a basketball court, buys balls and shoes and takes up the challenge to help his nephew learn to play the sport.   This is the chronicle of Daniel’s progress from awkwardness, through goals, drills every morning, to his first game as a high school player.  “This is not about basketball” is the uncle’s mantra.  “This is about your piano lessons, your Spanish class.  This is about life, Daniel.”  The uncle explores his own painful memories of learning to play amidst neglect and disinterest from his parents.  He reflects on a range of topics: The brilliant coach who never played.  A speedster who had no speed. The anatomically impossible jump shot.  A guru who knew nothing.  Idiot twins who learn to read.  A jazz pianist who has heard rumors “they’s writin’ music”.  How the brains of John Nash (A BEAUTIFUL MIND) and Daniel tackle problems.  Golfers who learned without clubs.  The worldwide mystery of the 4-minute mile.  The TAO/DAO of basketball.  Death of a brother.  A throwaway kid who becomes a Navy officer.  The lesson that “Unusual, plus hard work, equals extra-ordinary.”  As Daniel progresses and nephew and uncle grow closer, we realize that this is about more than basketball.  It is about life - why the uncle’s was spared , extended.  It is about something valuable to Daniel: How it is that he learns.
[Approximately 50,000 words. Manuscript Completed]
TRIAL IN COOPERSTOWN by Tom Morgan.  In Cooperstown you attend your first jury trial, in 2006, of a man accused of beating his wife to death.  By the time the jury’s foreman sings out their verdict you have befriended the accused’s parents and brother and minister, the dead woman’s siblings, the district attorney who prosecutes and the colorful legendary man who crafts the defense for “an innocent man, ladies and gentlemen”.  In his farewell he beseeches you to “Let the people know what you witnessed here this week.”  Questions he peppered us with in his masterful defense will resonate with you for years to come.  You will come to appreciate COOPERSTOWN as a celebration of an American treasure, the jury trial.
[Approximately 85,000 words.  Manuscript Completed]

© Copyright 2005-2010, Rebecca S. Pratt
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