Her journey takes her deep into the heart of the Away in pursuit of freedom for herself, her friends, and her community. Can she unravel the conspiracy before it’s too late?
About The Away
Sonia Peterson can’t help but be excited for the bright future ahead as she nears the end of her last year of high school. But she quickly discovers that things are not what they seem in the quiet community of Glendale. After her neighbor’s suicide and a slew of disappearances, Sonia’s friend Devon divulges one of the town’s best-kept secrets: at eighteen, residents are required to receive a serum that takes away their immoral impulses and imperfections, or they are exiled to a place called the Away. At first, Sonia can’t believe what she’s heard, but when her turn for the appointment comes, all of her worst fears are confirmed. Now, she must decide who she can trust and discover who is really at the core of the plot to rob Glendale’s residents of their elemental human nature. Her journey takes her deep into the heart of the Away in pursuit of freedom for herself, her friends, and her community. Can she unravel the conspiracy before it’s too late?
Cassandra DeJesus is a first-time author. The Away came to her in a dream so strongly that she felt she had to write it. Cassandra’s highest education is a high school diploma with some college credits. Cassandra has worked in many different fields but has never found her true calling. It was at Bay Shore High School where she met her high school sweetheart and now husband, John DeJesus. They have two beautiful children together. Today, Cassandra continues to remain a stay-at-home mother for her two children. You can connect with her on her website, Instagram and Facebook.
Disclosure: This is a spotlight tour, I did not receive compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.
Traveling through hope, a great cause, disenchantment, hopelessness, discovery, and rebirth, the novel also recounts the travel of a generation as they move through time. As you read the pages of this book, you will discover a man perhaps not unlike yourself, seeking knowledge, peace, and faith.
About To Every Page a Turning: One’s Life Journey
Each man who journeys through life must travel through its season and ultimate lessons. For some, the journey is brief, and their life’s light is fleeting. They are like rockets that flare to the heavens, glowing brightly only to go black in the next instant. Still others travel what seem to be an abbreviated journey, missing some of life’s seasons, never knowing the agony or the ecstasy of what they have missed. But some live each season, taste each tear, relish each sunrise, and brace themselves against each burst of wind. They have traveled life’s highways and finally joined the many pieces of themselves into the whole person they were born to be.
When a man is clearing old files out from his garage, he comes across a folder containing an old manuscript he wrote twenty years previously as part of his recovery therapy. It had served as a catharsis for him to help transition old painful issues from his past. He was still a young man when he wrote the words, and as a senior in his seventies, he begins to reflect on his life s journey. As he reads the old papers, many memories come flooding back. He begins to find that our lives are like pages turning from one place in our lives to another, each unique, holding treasures and pains of its own, and each a window to growth, learning, and acceptance of who we are and who we were born to be.
In this novel, the journey begins in the innocence of America in the 1950s. Traveling through hope, a great cause, disenchantment, hopelessness, discovery, and rebirth, the novel also recounts the travel of a generation as they move through time. As you read the pages of this book, you will discover a man perhaps not unlike yourself, seeking knowledge, peace, and faith. Perhaps you, like he, have traveled through the paradigm shift of the twentieth century both in awe and fear of what lies ahead.
You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon and B&N.
About the Author
Carl Buccellato was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942, and is of Italian-American descent. As a young man, he was eager to get out into the world and explore the boundaries of his hometown. Although he had a love for fishing at Coney Island Pier and singing Do Wop on the corners with friends, he knew there was much more of the world to see on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. One of his first jobs as a teenager in New York City was working for Western Union as a messenger. It didn’t take Carl long to own the streets of the Big Apple. As he went from building to building on his bicycle delivering his envelopes, little did he know what his fate would become years later.
With a lot of hard work, perseverance, and God’s grace, a day would come when Carl would become the CEO of a publicly traded company and ink a multimillion-dollar deal in the board room of AIG, then the largest insurance company in America. In his early years, he earned a BA and MBA, married, and started a family. Today, Carl has four children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren carrying on the family legacy.
Through the years, he started several companies and has served on several Boards of Directors, including private and public companies, as well as serving on the Board of Trustees of St. Thomas University. Carl’s career has taken him literally all over the world. In the 80s and 90s he was a regular monthly contributor to a BBC broadcast in England. In 1986, Inc. Magazine featured his firm as the 12th fastest growing independent company in America. In 1984, Carl was invited to become a member of the Presidential Council of 100. This group of business leaders advised the President of the United States on several sectors of the economy and business issues. Carl served three different presidents during his time on the council: presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Throughout his career and travels, Carl has met a broad array of different people. Some, down on their luck, some at the pinnacle of their careers and personal lives. Many of the people and their stories left a mark on Carl’s heart and mind. It is from some of these encounters that Carl has drawn inspiration for a few of the fictitious characters in this novel.
Today, Carl resides in Coral Springs, Florida, with his wife Mary Ellen. She is an award-winning multimedia artist and speaker. Together, Carl and Mary Ellen love traveling the globe and looking for new inspiration for their gifts and talents given to them by their loving God.
Disclosure: This is a spotlight tour, I did not receive compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.
Melanin is the friend we all wish was in our group when we were in school. Kind, sincere, and smart, Melanin is a leader for our times whose compassion knows no bounds. Open these pages and accompany Melanin on her path to self-confidence!
About Melanin Brown Discovers America
Melanin Brown is a girl far beyond her years who observes a brand new student being bullied at her school because of his ethics. This causes her to feel distressed, uncomfortable, and the treatment does not sit right with her. As she is given guidance from her parents, friends, and teachers, she also leans on her desire to treat people in the same manner in which she would want to be treated. Melanin finds how to confront disparate difficult situations while simultaneously navigating her own sense of truth and justice.
Melanin is the friend we all wish was in our group when we were in school. Kind, sincere, and smart, Melanin is a leader for our times whose compassion knows no bounds. Open these pages and accompany Melanin on her path to self-confidence!
You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon, B&N and Mascot.
About the Author
Candice Davis is a middle school Special Education Teacher in Washington, D.C., with a background in film. She started her career in education as a Curriculum and Personnel Specialist, writing grants and proposals. Due to her desire to have more of a direct impact with disadvantaged students, she transitioned into teaching. This is Davis’s debut book. She holds a M.Ed. in Educational Psychology with a focus in Social Foundations from the University of Virginia and a BA in Film and Video Studies from George Mason University.
Disclosure: This is a spotlight tour, I did not receive compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.
Parents never worry. No one journeys alone through life because whenever a child is born, he is given a guardian angel.
About Whenever a Child is Born
In his 2014 homily for the Feast of Holy Guardian Angels, October 2, Pope Francis told those gathered for daily mass to be like children who pay attention to their “traveling companion. No one journeys alone, and no one should think that they are alone.
“According to Church tradition,” the pope said, “we all have an angel with us, who guards us . . . It is what God said: ‘I send an angel before you, to guard you, to accompany you on the way, so you will not be alone.”
In this children’s book, angels wait anxiously and with great excitement to see which one of them will be chosen to be the guardian angel of a child that is to be born. This delightful book depicts the joy of all God’s creations anticipating the birth of another precious child. The sun shines brighter, the moon has a shinier glow, flowers grow taller, birds tweet more sweetly, and angels dance and sing with bliss, as all creation awaits another baby girl or boy.
Whenever a Child Is Born offers the perfect message for parents as it charmingly tells the story of how all of heaven and earth react to the news that a child is about to be born. The story comforts parents with the knowledge that their baby is a special gift from heaven to them, and that they will never be alone raising their child, and that their child will never ever be alone in life.
Parents never worry. No one journeys alone through life because whenever a child is born, he is given a guardian angel.
Nancy Diedrich was born and raised in South Louisiana, where storytelling was not just an art form, but an authentic way of communicating. Everyone had a tale to tell! This was, more than likely, where her love of communication developed. With undergraduate degrees in English and speech, and graduate degrees in psychological counseling, Nancy learned that words can educate; they can entertain; they can inspire and they can heal. In Nancy’s career, she has been a teacher, a counselor and an author, where the power of words always guided her in interaction with her students, clients and readers. Nancy’s value for genuine communication extends beyond her career, to the anchors of her life, which are her faith, her family and her friendships.
Whenever A Child Is Born is Nancy’s first published children’s book. In it, the reader gets a glimpse of this author’s compassion for family, and her gift of faith, as the story tells how all of heaven and earth react to the news that a child is about to be born.
From the multiple-award-winning author of To Tuscany with Love comes a captivating story of the epic tug of war between honor and duty, the irrepressible power of love, and the concept of family.
About It Happened in Tuscany
From the multiple-award-winning author of To Tuscany with Love comes a captivating story of the epic tug of war between honor and duty, the irrepressible power of love, and the concept of family.
In 1945, Will Mills and his fellow soldiers in the 10th Mountain Division scaled Italy’s treacherous Riva Ridge in the frigid night to break through the nearly impenetrable German line of defense. Severely wounded, Will was rescued by Italian partisans and one, a beautiful girl, tended his injuries until he had the strength to rejoin the U.S. troops.
Tormented and haunted by his decisions and actions during wartime, Will knows he has unfinished missions in Italy to complete. The passage of time and years of carrying this unfulfilled need have molded Will into a bitter, angry man.
Seventy-five years later, Will’s spunky thirty-two-year-old neighbor, Sophie Sparke, faces disaster in her life. Everything is going wrong—her job, her love life, even her dog. Part of the problem is that confident and fiercely independent Sophie lets her quick mouth get her into trouble.
Grouchy, mean-spirited Will finagles Sophie into traveling with him to Tuscany to find the partisan who saved his life. Will also secretly hopes to confront the demons his wartime actions created. Sophie and Will comb enchanting Tuscan hill towns on an improbable and unfolding mission with few clues to aid them. Will’s passionate tenacity drives their quest and in the process exposes their darkest secrets. The journey alters the course of their lives, and Will and Sophie find more than they had imagined in the hills of Tuscany.
My Thoughts
A beautiful story from start to finish, It Happened in Tuscany made me laugh and cry and I did not want to put the novel down.
Will fought in Italy during WWII and was rescued by the incredible Francesca. Like so many fellow soldiers, Will carried guilt, regret and many more emotions from the time he spent during the war in Italy. Like so many individuals his age, he guards his secrets well. He lets Sophie in but only a little at a time. After the death of his wife, and likely facing the end of his of his own life, he wants to write the wrongs he did and find the love of his life. He enlists the help of Sophie, although she was reluctant at first. Why would she want to help her angry and grumpy neighbour? But as Sophie begins to get to know Will a bit better, she begins to grow fond of this soft man with a hard shell and all of the secrets he holds close to his heart.
Together the two of them undertake quite the journey – to find his lost love in Italy after seventy five years! What a journey this becomes – a journey that seems almost doomed from the start. But on their way, the pair make friends, make peace with their past and their future, something that Will so desperately needed. We watch the pair struggle, become lost and their despair and frustration. You are on their side cheering them on, hoping and praying that they find the lost Francesca. The rich plot brings to life Italy and their search for love.
It Happened in Tuscany is a beautiful and rich story, full of hope, faith and forgiveness. The characters hold a special place in your heart, their story will bring tears to your eyes and you will not want to put the story down as you have to know what happens. It is a beautiful story of forgiveness, healing, hope and love. This is a definite must read novel!
You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon, Audible, B&N and Indiebound.
Rating: 5/5
About the Author
Gail Mencini is the acclaimed author of It Happened in Tuscany and To Tuscany with Love, both of which are Denver Post #1 bestsellers and award winners. Gail grew up in DeWitt, Nebraska, graduated from Wartburg College with a BA in Accounting and Economics, and earned a master of taxation degree from the University of Denver. A frequent visitor to Tuscany and a homegrown gourmet cook, Gail has toured Italy by car, train, bus, Vespa, and foot. She lives in Colorado with her husband.
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