The Humor and Satire Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Satire, Humor and Allegory Fiction. The Humor and Satire Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).
Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring satire, humor, political ideology, parody, fantasy, and allegory or fable. These books have advanced to the next judging rounds. We will put them to the test and choose the best among them.
These titles have moved forward from the 2024 HUMOR & SATIRE SHORT LIST to the 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards SEMI-FINALISTS. These entries are now in competition for the 2024 Humor & Satire FINALISTS. FINALISTS will be chosen from the Semi-Finalists and recognized at the Chanticleer Authors Conference, CAC25.
We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 5th, 2025 in beautiful Bellingham, WA at the Bellingham Yacht Club sponsored by the 2025Chanticleer Authors Conference.
These titles are in the running for the Finalists of the 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards novel competition for Humorous, Satirical and Allegorical Fiction!
Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!
Ariel Peckel – Bertram’s Emporium of Things People Say
T.C. Morrison – Who Put the Bots in the Tort$?
Jeffrey Hope – Real Spies Don’t Use Rowboats
Nancy Mccabe – The Pamela Papers a Mostly E-Pistolary Story of Academic Pandemic Pandemonium
Kt Nalla – I Scream We All Scream
Lou Dischler – Mona’s Odyssey the Curious History of the Girl Who Destroyed Time
Neal Rabin – Flat
Bill Burkland – The Misconceived Conception of a Baby Named Jesus
DM Baronov – Arthur an Actuarial Odyssey
Elizabeth Crowens – Bye Bye Blackbird
JP Rieger – Sunscreen Shower
Julie L. Brown – No One Will Save Us: A novel
Daniel Lawrence Abrams – Immortality Bytes: Digital Minds Don’t Get Hungry
D.C. Cameron – Dysfunctional Regulatory Bodies: Cowpies and Lies
Ben Gonshor – The Book of Izzy
Alexander Boldizar – The Man Who Saw Seconds
Colette Tajemna – The Corpse in the Trash Room
John Young – Getting Huge
Dan Kopcow – Madcap Serenade
Marco Ocram – The Awful Truth About The Name Of The Rose
Patrick Finegan – Toys in Babylon
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.
PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!
This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the Facebook post. However, it is easier for us to tag authors when they have Liked and Followed us on Facebook.
Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.
The Somerset Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Contemporary and Literary Fiction. The Cygnus Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).
Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring contemporary stories, literary themes, adventure, magical realism, or women and family themes. These books have advanced to the next judging rounds. We will put them to the test and choose the best among them.
These titles have moved forward in the first look rounds from all 2024 SOMERSET Contemporary Fiction entries to the 2024 Somerset Book Awards LONG LIST. These entries are now in competition for the 2024 Somerset Short List. The Short Listers will compete for the Semi-Finalists positions. FINALISTS will be chosen from the Semi-Finalists and recognized at the Chanticleer Authors Conference, CAC25.
We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 5th, 2025 in beautiful Bellingham, WA at the Bellingham Yacht Club sponsored by the 2025Chanticleer Authors Conference.
These titles are in the running for the SHORT LIST of the 2024 Somerset Book Awards novel competition for Contemporary and Literary Fiction!
Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!
Conon Parks – Down and Out in Omaha
Samantha Schinder – Loud Voices
Rachel Valencourt – Twilight’s Brightest Star
Deonna Kay – The Measure of Enough
Torres & Firsht – Tell Me Your Plans
Robert Steven Goldstein – Golda’s Hutch
Natalie Musgrave Dossett – Sarita
Robert Gwaltney – Sing Down the Moon
Ann Bancroft – Almost Family
Kat Caldwell – Bended Loyalty
Christina Boyd – Woman in the Painting
Lisa Gruwell Spicer – Radio Smokva a Croatian American Story
David B. Seaburn – Until It Was Gone
Maryann Clarke – Secrets at the Aviary Inn
Craig Allen Heath – Killing Buddhas
Wesley J. Wildman – The Winding Way Home
Leslie Wibberley – The Unraveling of Emma Hill
Leslie Kain – What Lies Buried
Melissa Connelly – What Was Lost
Abbe Rolnick – The Underpainting
Alissa Butterworth – To Die Is Different Than Supposed
Jonna Lyons Johnson – Tapping Light
Neroli Lacey – The Perfumer’s Secret
Rupert Taylor – Please Let Me Destroy You
Zelly Ruskin – Not Yours to Keep
Donna Norman-Carbone – Of Lies and Honey
Julie Weary – Never, Ever, Always
D. L. Whipple – The Outcast
John W. Feist – Edged in Purple
Graydon Dee Hubbard – Network Apprentice, Behind the Scenes in Talk Television
William Robert Reeves – The In-House Politician
Judith Krummeck – The Deceived Ones
Leilana Rae – The Meaning Between Us
Tamara Hart Heiner – Of Life, Love, and Other Noble Pursuits
Ruth F. Stevens – The Unexpected Guests
Reenita M. Hora – Vermilion Harvest – Playtime at the Bagh
Allan Ishac – The Mystic In The Mews
Keith McWalter – Lifers
Ben Gonshor – The Book of Izzy
J. Drew – On the Surface of the Sun
Joy Ross Davis – The Goddess of Weaver Street
Dianne C. Braley – The Summer Before
Phyllis Gobbell – Prodigal
Stephanie Alexander – Mean Low Water
S.M. Stevens – Beautiful and Terrible Things
Natia Khaduri – A Soldier’s Burden
Kay Smith-Blum – Tangles
Jeff Hartman – How To Win The Nobel Peace Prize
Rich Miller – It Rhymes With Truth
Anthony Horton – Unpaved
Anne Heinrich – God Bless The Child
Tamar Anolic – Like Water and Ice
Patricia Averbach – Dreams of Drowning
Antonia Gavrihel – Back to One: Take 4 Slating Magic Hour
John David Graham – Running As Fast As I Can
Meredith Walters – This Animal Body
Woody Woodburn – The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations
Cheryl Grey Bostrom – Leaning on Air
Erika Shepard – Abomination Child
Leslie DeBrock – The Frog-Eyed Gospel, A Texas Exodus
Mary Behan – Finding Isobel
Linda A Lavid – Quigley Tree: A Novel
Chris Chan – She Ruined Our Lives
Ann Bancroft – Almost Family
Jeffrey Blount – Mr. Jimmy From Around the Way
R.w. Meek – The Dream Collector: Sabrine & Sigmund Freud
Mary Elizabeth Gillilan – Confluence
Holly C LaBarbera – All I Know
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.
PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!
This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the Facebook post. However, it is easier for us to tag authors when they have Liked and Followed us on Facebook.
Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.
The Humor and Satire Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Satire, Humor and Allegory Fiction. The Humor and Satire Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).
Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring satire, humor, political ideology, parody, fantasy, and allegory or fable. These books have advanced to the next judging rounds. We will put them to the test and choose the best among them.
These titles have moved forward in the first look rounds from all 2024 HUMOR & SATIRE Fiction entries to the 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards SHORT LIST. These entries are now in competition for the 2024 Humor & Satire FINALISTS. FINALISTS will be chosen from the Semi-Finalists and recognized at the Chanticleer Authors Conference, CAC25.
We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 5th, 2025 in beautiful Bellingham, WA at the Bellingham Yacht Club sponsored by the 2025Chanticleer Authors Conference.
These titles are in the running for the Semi-Finalists of the 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards novel competition for Humorous, Satirical and Allegorical Fiction!
Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!
Ariel Peckel – Bertram’s Emporium of Things People Say
T.C. Morrison – Who Put the Bots in the Tort$?
John Arthur Robinson – More Later Lyle’s Letters From the University
Jeffrey Hope – Real Spies Don’t Use Rowboats
Nancy Mccabe – The Pamela Papers a Mostly E-Pistolary Story of Academic Pandemic Pandemonium
G.T. Walker – Curse of the Maestro and Other Stories
Kt Nalla – I Scream We All Scream
Lou Dischler – Mona’s Odyssey the Curious History of the Girl Who Destroyed Time
Neal Rabin – Flat
Bill Burkland – The Misconceived Conception of a Baby Named Jesus
DM Baronov – Arthur an Actuarial Odyssey
Elizabeth Crowens – Bye Bye Blackbird
JP Rieger – Sunscreen Shower
Julie L. Brown – No One Will Save Us: A novel
Daniel Lawrence Abrams – Immortality Bytes: Digital Minds Don’t Get Hungry
D.C. Cameron – Dysfunctional Regulatory Bodies: Cowpies and Lies
Ben Gonshor – The Book of Izzy
Alexander Boldizar – The Man Who Saw Seconds
Colette Tajemna – The Corpse in the Trash Room
John Young – Getting Huge
Chris Chan – Nessie’s Nemesis
Dan Kopcow – Madcap Serenade
Marco Ocram – The Awful Truth About The Name Of The Rose
Patrick Finegan – Toys in Babylon
TK Sheffield – Model Wave
JP Rieger – The Big Comb Over
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.
PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!
This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the Facebook post. However, it is easier for us to tag authors when they have Liked and Followed us on Facebook.
Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.
Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring satire, humor, political ideology, parody, fantasy, and allegory or fable. The Deadline for the 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards is the end of October.
Looking to learn more about the Humor and Satire Awards? Click here!
Lets take a look at the Winners of the Humor and Satire Award!
Quantum Consequence By Mike Murphey
Quantum Consequences, the fifth book in the Physics, Lust, and Greed Series by Mike Murphy, mixes conflicts from the past, present, and future as a group of time travelers clash over the fate of multiple worlds.
Marta and Marshall have to protect Baptiste, a child living under the rule of his mother’s abusive boyfriend, Ignace Aguillard. When their friend Cecil is murdered, Baptiste inherits his money and stake in a secret governmental facility beneath the Arizona desert, the Historical Research Initiative Complex. To keep that money out of Aguillard’s hands and confirm whether Aguillard truly killed Cecil, Marta and Marshall take Baptiste to the HRI, revealing its true nature as the hub of interdimensional time travel.
Meanwhile, a team of assassins and former HRI personnel, Gillis, Lexi, and Elvin, are instructed by a future version of Lexi to kill John Dexter– Lexi’s bitter ex and future higher-up in the dystopian Christian Fundamentalist States of America. They break into the HRI, now seemingly abandoned, to figure out whether they should take the job.
The Coen Brothers meet Garrison Keillor in Steven Mayfield’s quirky, offbeat, and often hilarious Delphic Oracle, U.S.A.
One June afternoon in 1925, seventeen-year-old Maggie Westinghouse, out walking alone as was her custom, comes upon a stranger in a railroad switch-house asleep on a pile of gunnysacks. Maggie, who has always stood a little apart from the town, has recently begun to experience visions that come upon her “in a leisurely way,” ending in a swoon and a restless sleep filled with exotic talk of which she later has no memory. No one knows what to make of it, but they soon will. After this afternoon’s chance encounter with July Pennybaker, a charming grifter on the lam, her world will never be the same. Neither will the town of Miagrammesto Station.
Eighty-nine years later, in the days leading up to and following the July 4th weekend, domestic dramas are playing out across Delphic Oracle, Nebraska (nee Miagrammesto Station).
Certified by Roger Wilson-Crane is a multi-award-winning comedy-drama, following one man down three sharp turns in his life trajectory.
Based on real-life events, Certified shows the narrator’s birth, marriage, and death, three of the most significant milestones in human life. The book is divided into three sections.
“One Unexpected Birth” explores his flawed string of relationships until he meets Dawn, the love of his life. However, a woman from the past makes a comeback, threatening to shatter his newly found happiness.
“One Hapless Wedding” careens about his well-planned wedding in Puglia, Italy, which is trampled by Justin Timberlake who wants the same venue. “One Bizarre Death”, on the other hand, follows the loss of the narrator’s loved one and the pain and confusion that surrounds an unexpected death. Certified is full of humor, heart, and unexpected gems that one might find in a trunk of well-lived memories.
Charlie Suisman’s debut novel is a wonderful escape to a small fictional community in upstate New York. Here a melting pot of quirky residents brings Arnold Falls to life, a town with a unique history and charming inhabitants whose lives are intimately intertwined.
Settled in 1803 by the unscrupulous Hezekiah Hesper, the town for unknown reasons was named after Benedict Arnold. Adding to the oddities, the closest waterfall is twenty miles away. The area is known for sudden bursts of crab apple-size hail pelting the landscape without any scientific explanation. Hence the incentive for “Hail Pail Day,” a neighborly tradition surrounding the distribution of galvanized bucket head-coverings.
Suisman engagingly presents Jeebie Walker as the story’s primary narrator. A gay man in his early 40s, he moved north of the city in the hopes of a quieter life with his partner, Miles. Though things didn’t work out, Jeebie has settled into his fixer-upper, Queen Anne-style abode, and now seems a positive fixture in this hamlet.
Based on a true story, Andy Becker’s tale The Kissing Rabbi is a smart, witty, and engaging novel that takes readers into the heart of a Jewish community in the Pacific Northwest.
Here a young, self-serving rabbi sets a town on edge when his salacious desires and personal financial agenda are brought to light by the people he was brought there to serve.
Rabbi Mishegas Dreidel, a young orthodox leader, arrives in the quiet town of Destiny, Oregon. His intentions seem noble as he opens up a synagogue in his basement and establishes a flock of dedicated followers.
Lou Dischler delivers an intricately woven story about one well-meaning boy who tries to make sense of the crazy he’s been born into. Get ready for one belly laugh of an adventure in My Only Sunshine.
Welcome to the Louisiana low country, home of 9-year-old Charlie Boone, a kid growing up in 1962. Charlie, a most unreliable narrator, concerns himself with giant wingless wasps and biting red velvet ants. Combine his critter-concerns with the legend of the giant slugs, the story of his mother taken up by a hurricane, and the episode of the puddle he and his brother dug that grew into a pond, then turned into a lake, and we have one wildly imaginative ride well-worth taking.
Dischler delivers an epic tale that shifts from Charlie’s first-person point-of-view with his youthful ignorance coloring his observations to his Uncle Dan’s and “Aunt” Lola’s in third-person point-of-view. While Charlie ages and grows in wisdom as the story progresses, his uncle never seems to gain a lick of sense. Dischler skillfully applies the laws of magic realism to Charlie’s wonderful way of viewing his world. Uncle Dan’s story, on the other hand, derives from an inept conman’s rap-sheet – from failed grifts to bank robbery bungles that succeed only by accident. Dischler guides us, normalizing the ridiculous to the point that the characters jump off the page and set up camp in your living room.
Now that you’re set on your next reads, what are you waiting for? The only way to join this amazing list of Humor and Satire Winners is to submit today!
Those who submit and advance will have the chance to win the Overall Grand Prize of the CIBAs and $1000!
Now is your chance to touch the hearts of readers everywhere. Your Humor or Satire story deserves to be discovered, and you can submit to the 2024 Humor and Satire Awards by the end of the month. Don’t miss this chance to give your book the recognition it deserves.
The Series Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in Genre Fiction (and now Non-Fiction). The Grand Prize Winner, David Fitz-Gerald’s Series, Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Series contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!
While these Award Winning Series are all Multi-book sagas, we are going to showcase the most important part of a Series. The beginning. Having a good start makes it memorable. The first book is the foundation, laying the first stitches into what later becomes a whole tapestry, telling their story.
Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Series Winners!
Introducing Casimir “Caz” FitzDuncan, a resident of the medieval kingdom of Aquileia. He makes his living retrieving things when the law will not help.
A woman has come to him, seeking his assistance in escaping a contract to marry a nobleman with a foul reputation. After their meeting, she is kidnapped not far from his residence.
Caz is accused of abducting her and forced to investigate her disappearance. Aided by his friend Freddy, Lord Rawlinsford, and Freddy’s mysterious cousin Lucy, Caz works to find the kidnapper.
Be careful Caz, the closer you get to finding the truth, the more tangled you are in a web designed specifically to trap you.
In this fantasy adventure book series you will be whisked away in a medieval time of magical realism, masters of sword fighting, and action & adventure that won’t allow you to put the book down.
Will Caz be able to rescue an innocent victim and save himself when skill with a sword is not enough?
When Thomas’s family is annihilated in a raid, his life changes forever. Wandering for days, starving and hopeless, he is rescued by a monk and is taken to live at the abbey of Eynsham. There he receives a curious education, training to be a scholar, a merchant and a spy. His mission: to develop commerce in Muslim lands and dispatch vital information to the Holy See.
His perilous adventures during the 11th century’s commercial revolution will take him far from his cloistered life to the great trading cities of Almeria, Amalfi, Alexandria and Cairo.
But the world in which he lives is chaotic. Struggling with love and loss, faith and fortune, can Thomas carry out his secret mission before conflict overtakes him?
Spanning the tumultuous medieval worlds of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, The Sugar Merchant is a tale of clashing cultures, massive economic change and one man’s determination to fulfil his destiny.
From Chanticleer: 2019 Chaucer 1st Place Winner
Narrated by a boy who grows up in a monastery and is trained to be a spy, The Sugar Merchant is set in the late 11th Century when the Great Crusades were on the verge of erupting in Europe and the Middle East.
When Thomas is forced to flee after rebels attack his family, he is finally discovered, ragged and starving, by a giant of a man named Leofric. Taken under the wing of the monks at Eynsham Abbey, Thomas is educated while accepting the strict discipline of the Benedictine order. In his late teens, he is surprised and disappointed to learn he will not join the Order but will be employed as an agent and spy. His task will be to find, secretly copy and send back manuscripts written by Islamic scholars. These documents contain knowledge that the Catholic Church needs to maintain its control.
Accompanied by Leofric, who taught him the arts of war based on his own checkered past as a mercenary, Thomas travels to Spain, to the city of Granada (called Gharnatah at the time). His travels will take him through the known Catholic realms and beyond, and, paradoxically, afford him the chance to meet, befriend and be aided in the abbey’s mission by good men of other faiths, both Muslim and Jew. As a cover for his work for Eynsham, he adopts a persona as a merchant of sukkar, or sugar, a commodity that will soon have excellent trading value. When a beautiful Muslim girl crosses his path, all that he has been taught will come into question as he strives to do what he believes to be right.
Sixteen-year-old Susan Smithson – pretty but poor, clever but capricious – has just been expelled from a school for young ladies in London.
At the mansion of the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she attracts a raffish young nobleman. But, at the first hint of scandal, her guardian dispatches her to her uncle Collins’ rectory in Kent, where her sensible cousin Alicia lives and “where nothing ever happens.”
Here Susan mischievously inspires the local squire to put on a play, with consequences no one could possibly have foreseen. What with the unexpected arrival of Frank Churchill, Alicia’s falling in love and a tumultuous elopement, rural Kent will surely never seem safe again…
In Europe, the Nazis are triumphant. England is under siege by air and sea. France has fallen to the Nazi Wehrmacht, which in turn fell on Soviet Russia. The Red Army is reeling in full retreat, with the Nazis at the gates of Moscow itself.
In the Pacific, Japan has been at war with China since 1937. Her war industries depend upon imports of scrap metal and oil from what are now the Allied nations. When an embargo is placed on imports to Japan, they are left with a year’s supply of oil to supply their armed forces.
Japan surrounds American possessions in the Philippines on three sides. The US Army is making a desperate, last-minute attempt to reinforce the Philippines garrison, but the clock is ticking for the Japanese, with their oil running out. The armed forces of Imperial Japan may attack the Philippines at any moment.
Two brothers, Jack and Charlie Davis, are pilots in the US Army Air Forces. They are part of the reinforcements sent to the Far Eastern Air Force, charged with air defense of the Philippines.
For Jack and Charlie, in a time when the US is on the brink of world war, a simple question must soon be answered: what will I do when the Japanese come?
From Chanticleer:
Everything We Had, book one of Tom Burkhalter’s No Merciful War series is an inexorable thrill that will grip readers tight. It starts with a poker game, through which a main character’s luck soon becomes evident. But will that luck hold out?
Jack—the poker player—and Charlie—Jack’s older brother—have been separated by war, even though that war has yet to be declared. Everything We Had focuses more on the machinations leading up to US involvement in World War II than on actual combat. The gears of war that have so many young men caught in them move with gradual but inevitable force, and so Everything We Had takes a more thoughtful approach to a historic moment in time.
Connecting with the characters is a gradual process as you get to know the intricacies that make up their individual personalities. This sets the reader up to feel the emotions of the characters as they face an uncertain fate, and throughout the book the author’s clear and methodical research shines with details such as specific views, locations, and—most notably—comprehensive descriptions of the airplanes Jack and Charlie pilot. This allows the reader to become deeply familiar with the motivations of the characters and the capabilities of the airplanes they fly.
The importance of their family gradually emerges, too, through their mother’s letters and their memories of their father who flew racing planes. The more readers learn, the more attachment they feel to these characters, giving weight to the growing danger they face.
An overzealous rookie cop. A biased old-boys club. Will she have to shoot her way in? Ro Delahanty never let her dream of becoming a cop out of her sights. Between years of black-belt judo lessons and sharpshooting championships, she thought she could handle anything the academy threw her way. But as the only female rookie on the force, she soon discovers it’ll take a warrior’s determination to get out from behind the desk and into the action.
Knowing she’ll have to work twice as hard for half the respect, she refuses to let distractions like a new boyfriend block her target. And her sacrifices will be well worth it if she can secure a “handle” that brands her as an equal instead of the butt of a joke. When a simple field assignment spirals into a heavily-armed hostage standoff, will Ro and her trusty Sig Sauer P229 .357 aim true or will she miss the shot she’s trained her whole life to take?
Ro’s Handle is the first book in the gritty Ro Delahanty police procedural series. If you like tenacious heroines, crime scene drama, and high-octane shootouts, then you’ll love David Lager’s torn-from-the-headlines tale. Buy Ro’s Handle and test your aim on a straight-shooting criminal case today!
Amid a violent Hudson Valley thunderstorm, Jessie Martin discovers a woman lying unconscious in a roadside ditch. The badly beaten victim, Lissie Sexton, a local prostitute, claims she’s escaped the attack of a killer.
Jessie’s more than a casual driver who passes by; she’s a criminal-defense attorney. And Lissie is more than an ordinary hooker. She’s the key witness in a cold case under investigation by Jessie’s estranged longtime friend, Detective Ebony Jones.
And now Ebony can’t find her witness. Jessie’s new boss has sent Lissie into hiding. If Jessie reveals Lissie’s location she compromises her client, her firm and her professional ethics. If she doesn’t, she risks alienating not just Ebony but the entire police department backing her.
A simple act of compassion forces Jessie to choose between her duty and her friend.
For over three hundred years, that’s what the Hamilton family has called a shrinking swath of farmland in the Appalachian foothills of South Carolina.
Home.
That’s the failing tobacco farm where Walter and Maggie Hamilton choose to raise their three children. Walter has big plans to make the farm more profitable, but his plans are interrupted by World War II and family heartbreak. Walter returns from the war a changed man and finds Maggie, too, has changed, neither of them for the better. But at least their family is together again at…
Home.
More than anything, that’s where their eight-year-old son, Jimmy Hamilton, wants to be. However, after an unspeakable tragedy, he’s sent away from the only life he’s ever known to live with a kindly uncle in North Carolina.
Home.
That’s where Jimmy is finally going to be, unless fate has plans of its own…
A Song that Never Ends is the first installment of the Hamilton Place series, an epic family saga extending from the Great Depression to present day. Through war and peace, love and loss, triumph and tragedy, follow the Hamilton family on their journey from a run-down farm in South Carolina, through the jungles of Vietnam, to the top of the world in New York City, and beyond the gardens of stone at Arlington.
From Chanticleer:
A Song That Never Ends, the first volume of a two part series by Mark A. Gibson, opens a dramatic fictional saga of the Hamilton family from the late 1930s Depression era, to 1967 and the Vietnam conflict. Here against the backdrop of a South Carolina tobacco farm, we come to witness a family in turmoil.
The calm and reserved Walter Hamilton and his rebellious, impulsive wife Maggie strive to build a life and raise a family. But the couple is tested by a series of misfortunes—miscarriages and stillbirths, and Walter’s enlistment during WWII leaving him with guilt-induced PTSD as he deals with the memory of fallen comrades.
At the center of this heartfelt story is James, the middle child, who at the tender age of eight is forced from his home due to a horrific accident and sent to live with a widower uncle.
James proves to be an extremely intelligent and talented youngster who longs for a connection to his family. In the meantime, he learns from his gracious uncle to deal with dire situations and unexpected circumstances in life, as well as the importance of having a charitable heart. Under the tutelage of this kind, caring, and nurturing man, the story begins to evolve into a coming-of-age tale.
The Somerset Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Contemporary and Literary Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Judy Keeslar Santamaria’s book, You Can’t Fool a Mermaid, will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Somerset contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!
It’s 1975, and Misty Menard unexpectedly inherits her father’s business in Lake Placid, New York. It never occurred to her that she could wind up as the CEO of a good old-fashioned manufacturing company.
After years of working for lawyers, Misty knows a few things about the law. Her favorite young attorney is making a name for himself, helping traditionally owned companies become employee owned, using a little-known, newly-passed law. When he offers to help Misty convert Adirondack Dowel into an ESOP, pro bono, Misty jumps at the chance.
The employees are stunned, the management team becomes hostile, and the Board of Directors is concerned. Misfortune quickly follows the business transformation. A big customer files for bankruptcy. A catastrophic ice jam floods the business. Stagflation freezes the economy. A mysterious shrouded foe plots revenge. Misty’s family faces a crisis. The Trustee is convinced something fishy is going on, the appraiser keeps lowering the company’s value, and the banker demands additional capital infusions. Misty thought she had left her smoking addiction and alcoholism in the past, but when a worker’s finger is severed in an industrial accident, Misty relapses.
Disasters threaten to doom the troubled company. After surviving two world wars and the Great Depression, it breaks Misty’s heart to think that she has destroyed her father’s company. All she wants is to cement her father’s legacy and take care of the people who built the iconic local business. Can a quirky CEO and her loyal band of dedicated employee owners save an heirloom company from foreclosure, repossession, and bankruptcy?
From Chanticleer:
If It’s The Last Thing I Do by David Fitz-Gerald tells the story of Misty Menard, a 69-year-old woman who in 1975 returns to her upstate New York hometown to attend the funeral of her beloved father. She is dumbfounded to find she has inherited his business, making wooden dowels and buttons.
A receptionist for most of her adult life, with no business experience, she is at best ill-suited to the job. Personal problems hang over her as well, as a divorcee determined to keep sober and cigarette-free while in weekly therapy. But to keep her father’s memory alive, she is determined to keep the business afloat while she decides what to do with it in the long term. The last thing she imagined she would be doing on the cusp of 70 was running a business.
She turns the business into an employee-owned enterprise, an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan.) This gives her employees a shot at owning part or all of the business. The skill with which If It’s the Last Thing I Do integrates ESOP into its story, making it digestible, is among its many pleasures.
Thirteen-year-old Evan Hanson is always the last in her family to know what’s going on—at least, that’s how it feels. Her father, Gene, who’s been meaner since he began serving in Vietnam, isn’t around much, and she likes it better that way. But then her brother, Adam, gets drafted and her anti-war mother, Endura, takes him across the border to Canada, leaving Evan alone with Gene and her younger, special needs brother, Teddy.
When he realizes Endura isn’t returning, Gene takes Evan and Teddy to Eat and Get Gas, his mother’s café and gas station in Hoquiam, Washington. There, as well as her no-nonsense but loving grandma, Evan encounters Aunt Vivian, a teasing but caring know-it-all; Uncle Frankie, injured in Vietnam and suffering from PTSD; Paco, the draft dodger Frankie is hiding; Hal and Hubert, the strange but gentle next-door neighbors who play the piano like virtuosos and help out when they’re needed; and Louanne, Frankie’s reserved, sensitive sister. She is drawn in particular to Louanne, who was disfigured by a car accident that killed the rest of her and Frankie’s family.
At Eat and Get Gas, Evan finds a new freedom, and she starts to carve out a place for herself by helping in the café and sorting mail for Uncle Frankie, who runs a postal route in addition to running the gas station. She eventually, too, learns some of the family secrets she’s been kept in the dark about—and comes to understand that her mother isn’t coming back any time soon.
It started the day she heard Daddy slur, “She ain’t mine. You had the nerve to name her Dawn. Look at her! You shudda named her Midnight!” Then Daddy left… for good. And the loving music that had filled Dawn’s life went silent.
That was the day that a “Midnight” Duckling appeared in the mirror, took up residence in her chest, and controlled her ability to breathe. That was the day she learned to recognize “leaving time” . . . her superpower.
Couched in speculation, Jus Breathe is the tale of a young Black woman’s struggle to defy her inner “Duckling” and embrace her true self. Set in New York City during the turbulent sixties, it’s an improbable love story with precarious impulses, secret pasts, and inner demons.
Dawn, a survivor, flees her stepfather’s violent home. While struggling to go to college, she perfects sofa-surfing and hones her ability to leave situations in an instant. But in the mist of the chaotic uprising that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, serendipity spins Dawn into Danny’s world.
Toxically in love, no longer a “leaver,” Dawn realizes that in order to survive, she must break free of Danny’s dominance. But that Duckling, who’s allied with Danny, threatens to squeeze the life-breath from her if she dares to leave . . . that ugly, midnight-black Duckling, she has to kill.
From Chanticleer:
A young woman strives to survive without a home, even as she must fight herself and her instincts, in Jus Breathe by B. Lynn Carter.
“It’s more like I walked away,” I said, fractured memories of the day I left surging into my mind. “My mother married herself a husband. It’s like the tale of the evil stepfather, I guess.” The words were spilling out. “On the first day that we moved in with him, he almost broke my jaw. So I left. She had to let me; you know – the survival thing. She knew. We both knew.”
In New York City during the tempestuous 1960s, Dawn flees an abusive family situation after her father leaves the family and her mother remarries. Determined to stay in education, she couch-surfs with friends and explores her contacts through school. Dawn manages to live and even graduate. With the help of sympathetic teachers and a social worker who believes in her, she goes to college. Dawn finds friends and boyfriends and makes her own way toward adulthood.
And then her life goes awry again, though this time, she has a harder time choosing whether to run.
Adam Craig still has nightmares about the last summer he spent on the shores of northern Wisconsin’s Black Bear Lake.
The Chicago stock trader thinks he has it under control – until fallout from an explosive August in 1983 threatens his marriage. So Adam returns to remember that month-long family reunion, where he was busy wrestling with developing adolescence, a parent’s failing health, and watching his cousin Dannie’s desperate cries for help. At 14, Adam’s fear and anger were constantly threatening to pull him under while the current running through his family flowed, inevitably, toward tragedy.
It was too much to bear back then. But will reliving those painful memories hurt or help Adam as his adult life teeters on the edge of collapse?
An ambitious podcaster and her reclusive interviewee embark on a life-altering journey to uncover long-lost truths in this immersive story about love, travel, and family secrets.
Forty years ago, aspiring writer Ann Fawkes left the United States for a Mediterranean adventure that opened her heart to travel and love. After a chance encounter propelled her into the publishing world, she released her first novel, an instant bestseller―and the last book she ever wrote.
Now, Ann lives a reclusive life in the San Juan Islands, hiding from the public and its probing questions. But when podcaster Maggie Whitaker convinces Ann to sit for an interview, Ann agrees on one condition: Maggie must keep her story off the record.
Determined to change Ann’s mind before she loses her job, Maggie agrees. But as she learns about Ann’s life―particularly the love affair that inspired her novel and the decisions she made in its wake―Maggie realizes Ann’s story intersects with her own in shocking, life-changing ways.
A sweeping, heart-wrenching novel that spans decades and continents, Halfway to You explores the distances we create between ourselves and the ones we love most and what it takes to finally bridge them.
When Lynn and her husband set out for a weekend retreat to repair their rocky marriage, icy roads lead to a fatal collision that ends Lynn’s life. Stranded between the physical world and the afterlife, Lynn experiences the grief of her loved ones as they process her death.
Lynn’s life-long friends are tortured by not only loss but also unspoken wounds in their friendship. With clever influences from above, Lynn coaxes them to reunite at a beachside cottage on the one-year anniversary of her death. Determined to prompt their healing so they can help her family move on, Lynn reminds them of a sacred promise, hoping it will lead to truths they can’t face on their own. Will it be enough to remind them of the power of their bond?
As Lynn struggles to repair the relationships she left behind, she soon realizes the greatest challenge will be letting them go.
Julia Navarro, a plucky newspaper call center manager, juggles like a pro—not tennis balls but quirky employees, cranky customers, and a sleazy boss. Pregnant and short on time to complete her “get ready for baby checklist,” Julia rushes to fill a job vacancy by hiring Carmen Cooper, a shy, inexperienced college student.
When Julia finds out Carmen never made it to work, she and a newsroom pal go undercover to find out why. Their shocking discovery leads them to cook up a half-baked plan to save Carmen from a Hollywood legend turned hermit, a man she calls “Papa.”
Will the gamble pay off or pave a path of twists, turns, and tragedy?
Only 10 days left to submit your books to these prestigious CIBA Divisions and embark on an extraordinary journey to success. With over $30,000 in prizes awarded annually, now is the time to make your mark!
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2023 Humor & Satire Awards for Allegorical Fiction!
Eileen O’Finlan – All the Furs and Feathers
Allyson Rice – The Key to Circus-Mom Highway
Marco Ocram – The Awful Truth About The Herbert Quarry Affair
Lou Dischler – The Rising
Steven Mayfield – The Penny Mansions
Tom Strelich – Water Memory
And a huge round of applause for the 2023 Humor & Satire Awards Grand Prize Winner:
Quantum Consequence
by Mike Murphey
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2023 Somerset Awards for Contemporary and Literary Fiction!
David Fitz-Gerald – If It’s the Last Thing I Do
J.A. Wright – Eat and Get Gas
B. Lynn Carter – Jus Breathe
Leslie Liautaud – Black Bear Lake
James Gish, Jr. – When Blackbirds Dream
Jennifer Gold – Halfway to You
Donna Norman-Carbone – All That is Sacred
Nova Garcia – Not That Kind of Call Girl
And a huge round of applause for the 2023 Somerset Awards Grand Prize Winner:
You Can’t Fool A Mermaid
By Judy Keeslar Santamaria
The CIBAs offer more than just recognition — they provide a ladder to success with a range of achievement tiers and expert long tail marketing strategies. From the highly anticipated Long List to the prestigious Overall Grand Prize Winner, the CIBA lists energize both authors and readers, maximizing your digital footprint and expanding your fan base.
We are always eager to support the Best Books through the CIBAs. Join the ranks of celebrated authors who have already taken this critical step in their publishing.
Your book deserves to be discovered, celebrated, and shared with the world. Don’t miss the chance to showcase your talent and gain valuable exposure at the Chanticleer Authors Conference (April 3-6, 2025) where Winners from all 25 Book Award Divisions will be announced and honored.
In a world hungry for good books, your story deserves to be heard. Submit now and leave a lasting impression.
Alice McVeigh – Warleigh Hall Press Jane Austen Series
Tom Burkhalter – No Merciful War
Dave Lager – The Ro Delahanty Novels
Jode Millman – The Queen City Crimes Series
Mark A. Gibson – Hamilton Place
The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2023 SERIES Awards is:
Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail
by David Fitz-Gerald
We are so looking forward to celebrating these incredible book series!
First though, let’s celebrate some recent books in a series that have come our way for review!
SUMMER CYCLONE: Magic at Myers Beach Book 4
By Alan B. Gibson
The citizens of the three fairy kingdoms clash, forced to live shoulder-to-shoulder alongside ungoverned Outliers. In Summer Cyclone, fourth book of Alan B. Gibson’s Magic at Myers Beach series, unassuming tea-shop manager Stefán tries to find love while keeping all of fairy society from fracturing.
The three fairy kings, Theos, Zsombor, and Christophe, evacuate their people to Myers Beach. It’s only here that they have any chance of recreating fairy dust after their old sources had been poisoned, and saving every fairy life. They take in the Outliers, remnants of a fallen kingdom, and at first find good will between the groups. But with thousands of fairies moving in, they have to keep everyone on a short leash or else risk humans catching wind of their new neighbors. Resentment of these strange Outliers builds.
Stefán, a close confidant to Theos, struggles to keep anti-Outlier sentiment at bay with the help of some enigmatic and knowledgeable new friends. Rumors of him giving the Outliers special treatment grow stronger as some fairies begin to suspect that he’s actually one of them.
Read more here!
SEA TIGERS And MERCHANTS: Salem Stories Book 2
By Sandra Wagner-Wright
Two families vie for power in mercantile 18th-century Salem. Sea Tigers and Merchants, the second book in Sandra Wagner-Wright’s Salem Stories series, returns to a world of treacherous storms, tantalizing wealth, and the demands of high society on its children.
Elias Hasket Derby, Sr. has kept his promise to his wife Eliza—they rule Salem. Hasket’s merchant ships bring in great fortune, while Eliza holds court as the most influential woman in the city’s social spheres. And their ambitions have grown to meet their station. Hasket launches his riskiest endeavor—the Grand Turk, a ship so massive she’s nearly too heavy to be pulled out of the docks. Meanwhile Eliza, snubbed by George Washington’s stay at another family’s mansion, insists they build a house so grand it will put all others to shame.
Such success, of course, draws the envious eye of Hasket’s competitor.
MAYDAY: Land, Sea, and Air Series Book 2
By Sue C. Dugan
In Sue C. Dugan’s middle grade adventure, Mayday: Land, Sea, and Air Series Book 2, thirteen-year-old Jessie and her father, Adam, take an unexpected detour when their plane crashes on a secluded island.
On their final vacation before Adam begins chemotherapy for thyroid cancer, Jessie and her father take off in their Cessna aircraft over the boundless, azure Atlantic Ocean. Jessie’s anxiety about her father’s health is on high-alert during the trip, especially when she remembers her mother’s cancerous death.
Twenty minutes into their flight, the sky grows gloomy, and the wind picks up speed from all sides.
DREAMS And ILLUSIONS: Gabrielle Dorian Mysteries Book 1
By Rebecca Olmstead
Dreams and Illusions by Rebecca Olmstead is a delicate interplay of mysteries balanced on an emotional undercurrent, exploring the immutable ebb and flow of life to find resilience in the shadow of misfortunes.
In the bustling town of Whitman, Gabrielle co-owns the boutique Belle Femme with her best friend, Kate. Radiating the tranquil aura of an empowered business owner, Gabrielle is a caring woman, but burdened with a secret she hides from everyone. Gabrielle is blessed—or perhaps cursed—with prophetic dreams.
Almost as if they are a glimpse into the future, Gabrielle wrestles with dreams that foretell an ominous fate. Soon she is confronted with a series of distressing events that thrust her into a mystery.
This is the journey from beginning to end for the CIBAs Levels of Achievement is so worthwhile! Every list you make means more promotion for you and your work as each list is posted right here on our website, on our social media, and also out in our newsletter!
The Humor and Satire Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Humorous, Satirical and Allegorical Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Mike Murphey’s book, Quantum Consequence, will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article to come, as well as be featured on the Humor and Satire contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year!
Smokey, an architect employed by Fluffington ArCATecture, lands the account of her dreams — designing the first ever cat park in Faunaburg. Her boss, Abigail Fluffington, says that if Smokey is successful, she’ll become a partner and inherit the business.
A dream come true? There’s one problem. The proposed park is adjacent to Rodent Way. Activist Jerome J. Ratley, quickly forms R.A.T. (Rodent Action Taskforce) and stages a protest.
Meanwhile, Smokey’s lovable but quirky sister and cooking savant, Autumn Amelia, is busy dishing up meals too delicious for any fur or feather to resist. And wandering uninvited into the kitchens of local restaurants to improve their recipes.
Together with their furred and feathered friends, Smokey and Autumn Amelia must find a way to make the proposed park a reality. But how to abolish the long-standing animosity between felines and rodents?
In an attempt to secure an unexpected inheritance–and hopefully find a few answers–two estranged sisters and their newly discovered brother embark on a comically surreal trip through the Deep South to retrace the life of the mother who abandoned them.
On a Tuesday afternoon, sisters Jesse Chasen and Jennifer McMahon receive a phone call notifying them that the birth mother they had no knowledge of has died, leaving behind a significant inheritance. But in order to obtain it, they must follow a detailed road trip she designed for them to get to know her–and that includes finding a brother they never knew existed.
For the next week, this ill-assorted trio treks across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia to meet their mother’s old friends, from circus-performers to a juke joint owner, each of whom delivers a shocking vignette into the life of a young mother traumatized by loss and abuse. Along the way, these three siblings–Jesse, whose fiery exterior disguises a drifting musician stuck in a rut; Jennifer, whose carefully curated family life is threatened by her husband’s infidelity; and Jack, whose enigmatic Jackie, Oh! persona in the New Orleans drag queen scene helps him escape the nightmares of Afghanistan that haunt him–must confront their own demons (and at least one alligator). But in chasing the truth about their real mother, they may all just find their second chance.
TV personality Marco Ocram is the world’s only self-penned character, writing his life in real time as you read it. Marco’s celebrity mentor, Herbert Quarry, grooms him to be the Jackson Pollock of literature, teaching him to splatter words on a page without thought or revision.
Quarry’s plan backfires when imbecilic Marco begins to type his first thought-free book: it’s a murder mystery-and Herbert’s caught red-handed by the butchered body of his lover.
Now Marco must write himself into a crusade to clear his friend’s name. Typing the first words that come into his head, Marco unleashes a phantasmagorical catalogue of twists in his pursuit of justice, writing the world’s fastest-selling book to reveal the awful truth about the Herbert Quarry affair.
While The Rising is a Manuscript, we’ve had the pleasure of reviewing his book My Only Sunshine, and we’ll include that here in celebration of his writing.
Lou Dischler delivers an intricately woven story about one well-meaning boy who tries to make sense of the crazy he’s been born into. Get ready for one belly laugh of an adventure in My Only Sunshine.
Welcome to the Louisiana low country, home of 9-year-old Charlie Boone, a kid growing up in 1962. Charlie, a most unreliable narrator, concerns himself with giant wingless wasps and biting red velvet ants. Combine his critter-concerns with the legend of the giant slugs, the story of his mother taken up by a hurricane, and the episode of the puddle he and his brother dug that grew into a pond, then turned into a lake, and we have one wildly imaginative ride well-worth taking.
Dischler delivers an epic tale that shifts from Charlie’s first-person point-of-view with his youthful ignorance coloring his observations to his Uncle Dan’s and “Aunt” Lola’s in third-person point-of-view. While Charlie ages and grows in wisdom as the story progresses, his uncle never seems to gain a lick of sense. Dischler skillfully applies the laws of magic realism to Charlie’s wonderful way of viewing his world. Uncle Dan’s story, on the other hand, derives from an inept conman’s rap-sheet – from failed grifts to bank robbery bungles that succeed only by accident. Dischler guides us, normalizing the ridiculous to the point that the characters jump off the page and set up camp in your living room.
With the Spanish flu pandemic on the rise, a former gold rush town— once the largest city in the Pacific Northwest— is threatened with extinction via eminent domain should their population fall below 125 citizens. To save their homes, former madam Maude Dollarhyde, her mixed-race grand-daughter, Bountiful, and their fellow council members agree to sell four abandoned mansions for a penny apiece if the buyers will stay in town long enough to be counted in the 1920 census. Soon, an eclectic cast of newcomers arrives, including a New York actor and his questionably-familial family; a lawyer with an agoraphobic wife, mute son, and austere nanny; six excommunicated Mormons; and the great-nephew of the town’ s hated former boss. As real estate developer and politician Gerald Dredd plots to foil the council’ s plan, the new families move in and knock over the first domino in a row that includes three romances, twelve sticks of dynamite, an unintentionally hilarious community theater production, an investigation by a Chicago insurance detective, and last of all, murder!
The earth’s magnetic poles have reversed and civilization has just had its clock reset to the great cosmic flashing 12:00am from almost a million years ago, and humanity, and everybody in it, is pretty much forgetting everything it learned since the last time.
Everybody except Hertell Daggett, who remembers pretty much everything because he’d once been shot in the head — the doctors got the bullet out, but missed a few tiny specks of copper that remained, floating inside his brain, connecting him to the things everybody else on earth is slowly forgetting. Hertell sees an opportunity to start civilization all over again, and maybe even get it right this time. What could possibly go wrong?
The Somerset Awards is our Division for Mainstream, Contemporary and Literary Fiction. Named for author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham.
William Somerset Maugham (pronounced MAWm), born January 25 1875 and died December 16, 1965, was one of the most popular and highly paid authors of the 1930s. During the WWI he served in the ambulance corps and then was recruited into the British Secret Service. He traveled widely, most notably to India, Southeast Asia, and Russia before the 1917 revolution, which influenced his writing. He was a contemporary of Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Evelyn Waugh.
Maugham is known for his writing’s diversity that consists of plays, short stories, and distinctive novel genres that have been adapted to film. He is well known for The Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale, The Magician, Rain, The Painted Veil, and his first work: Liza of Lambeth. He has twenty novels to his credit, twenty-five plays, and sixteen collections of short stories.
The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2023 SOMERSET Awards is:
You Can’t Fool A Mermaid
by Judy Keeslar Santamaria
We will celebrate those incredible Somerset Winners in due time. Right now, we’re going to focus on some of the best literary work we’ve received recently!
WHEN WALLS TALK
By Geralyn Hesslau Magrady
Toni has the chance to start her own business in the building of her family’s old bakery. But history waits within those walls. In Geralyn Hesslau Magrady’s novella, When Walls Talk, Toni and her father uncover secrets they could never have expected.
The Russo Bakery, with its 1920s architecture had been the family business since the four Russo brothers first opened its doors. Decades later, Toni and her widowed father plan a complete redesign of what their ancestors made to fulfill her dream of owning a bookstore. As the walls fall around the Russo family business, a long-hidden truth brings about profound personal changes for Toni.
Toni takes this giant leap into the unknown, unsure if she’s even prepared to own a business. But the bookstore is the key to her hope for a better future, her only path to escaping a past tragedy.
Unpaved by Anthony Horton is a pensive novel of how returning to one’s roots can reveal hints on how to move forward after a lifetime of grief.
Russell Nowak-McCreary is a man whose life has been proudly shaped by formidable women. His mother, Judith, was a prominent cardiac surgeon at the reputable St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. His wife, Anna, thrived as a student of Judith’s and has risen to the top of Boston’s best medical campus. And Russell’s work partner Sarah Westroes joined his company, Datatel, as its CEO with a relentless drive to expand its footprint in the tech industry. His childhood was spent without a father figure, only excepting the fond memories of a single summer at his grandfather’s cabin in the Canadian wilderness.
As he returns to the remote cabin of his youth to set his mother’s affairs in order, Russell takes this time alone to finally process all that he lost.
ROSES In DECEMBER: Hamilton Place, Book 2
By Mark A. Gibson
Roses in December is the epic conclusion to Mark A. Gibson’s compelling two-part family saga, Hamilton Place. Now focusing on the family’s next generation, James Hamilton Jr.—Jimmy—follows in the footsteps of the father he never met, a Vietnam War hero who died in battle, and ultimately finds his own path in life.
Pressured by a conning mother-in-law only out for monetary gain, the elder Jimmy’s widow, Becca, is pushed to marry Mack Lee, her deceased husband’s older brother who proves to be a cheating and abusive husband. Trapped in this loveless marriage, Becca hopes that attending church will remove her son from the toxic influence of her new husband and set him on the right path to a good life. But it’s the discovery of young Jimmy’s superior photographic memory that opens the door to a brighter future, and he sets a course to an outstanding medical career, coupled with military service in Afghanistan.
Gibson delivers the recent past with a great sense of immediacy, showing events that ripple into our contemporary world using pop references that are relevant in today’s world.
SPLINTERED DREAMS: The Dare to Love Series Book 1
By Diana Lynn
After decades spent in a loveless, broken marriage, Crisa wants another chance at love. In Splintered Dreams, a romance novella by Diana Lynn, she must first stumble through her own insecurities to find it.
When Crisa’s husband, Alan, dies unexpectedly she is left with a stark emptiness inside her heart. Her marriage had been a sham. Her husband’s infidelity and lies crushed her idea of love and left her with questions about who she is, what she wants, and will she ever trust someone with her heart again. Casual sexual relationships can’t fill the void. She needs true love.
Physical intimacy is only part of what Crisa desires. She yearns for the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.
These thoughtful books from Contemporary to Literary to Magical Realism are the kind of books you’ll talk about for years to come. Should yours be here?
This is the journey from beginning to end for the CIBAs Levels of Achievement is so worthwhile! Every list you make means more promotion for you and your work as each list is posted right here on our website, on our social media, and also out in our newsletter!
The Humor and Satire Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Satire, Humor and Allegory Fiction. The Humor and Satire Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).
The Somerset Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Contemporary and Literary Fiction. The Cygnus Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).
The Series Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in Genre Fiction (and now Non-Fiction). The Grand Prize Winner, David Fitz-Gerald’s Series, Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Series contest page year ’round!
