Tag: writing contests

  • The 2024 Humor and Satire Hall of Fame

    Humor and Satire Awards!

    The Humor and Satire Awards are here to bring you a laugh!

    ***No Joke! The Humor and Satire deadline is October 31st!***

    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.

    Read More Here

    Delphic Oracle Cover

    Delphic Oracle, USA
    By Steven Mayfield

    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).

    Read more here!

     

    Certified Cover

    Certified
    By Roger Wilson-Crane

    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.

    Read more here!

    Cover of Arnold Falls by Charlie Suisman

    Arnold Falls
    By Charlie Suisman

    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.

    Read more here!

    The Kissing Rabbi Cover

    The Kissing Rabbi
    By Andy Becker

    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.

    Read more here!

    My Only Sunshine
    Lou Discher

    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.

    Read more here!


    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!

    Enter the CIBAs Today!

    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 Humor and Satire Awards is your chance to shine!

  • The 2024 JOURNEY Awards Semi-Finalists for Overcoming Adversity in Narrative Non-Fiction

    The 2024 JOURNEY Awards Semi-Finalists for Overcoming Adversity in Narrative Non-Fiction

    Journey Narrative Non-Fiction CIBA BadgeThe Journey Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Overcoming Adversity in Narrative Non-Fiction and Memoir. The Journey Book Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (CIBAs).

    Chanticleer International Book Awards is looking for the best books featuring true stories about adventures, life events, unique experiences, travel, personal journeys, global enlightenment, and more. We will put books about true and inspiring stories to the test and choose the best among them. See our full list of Non-Fiction Divisions here

    These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from the 2024 Journey Non-Fiction SHORT LIST. Finalists will be selected from the Semi-Finalists. All FINALISTS will be announced and recognized at the Chanticleer Authors Conference (CAC25).

    The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

    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 Four Points by Sheraton sponsored by the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference

    A Wreath with the words "CAC 2025" on it to celebrate the Chanticleer Author's Conference!

     

    These titles are in the running for the FINALISTS of the 2024 Journey Book Awards novel competition for Overcoming Adversity in Non-Fiction!

    Join us in celebrating the Semi-Finalist authors and their works in the 2024 CIBAs.

    • Michael Salsbury – Running From Tragedy
    • Lynne Spriggs O’Connor – Elk Love: A Montana Memoir
    • Jane Kim Yu – Journey of Awakening and Higher Consciousness
    • Tamra McAnally Bolton – His 100th Year
    • Kirsten Throneberry – Guided: Lost Love, Hidden Realms, and the Open Road
    • Irena Smith – The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays
    • Jennifer Gasner – My Unexpected Life: Finding Balance Beyond My Diagnosis
    • Kathryn Caraway – Unfollow Me
    • Jill Vanneman – The Betterment Campaign
    • Linda M. Lockwood – Sky Ranch: Reared in the High Country
    • Etsuko Diamond Miyagi – Diamond – The Memoir of a Lost Daughter of Japan
    • Karen Elizabeth Lee – The Village That Betrayed its Children
    • Liz Alterman – Sad Sacked
    • Anne Gately – Sunburnt – A memoir of sun, surf and skin cancer
    • Natalie Kohlhaas – Hello Anxiety My Old Friend: Harness Your Invisible Superpower
    • Rachael Siddoway and Sonja Wasden – An Impossible Life: A True Story of Hope and Mental Illness
    • Léonie Rosenstiel – Protecting Mama: Surviving the Legal Guardianship Swamp
    • Ernestine Whitman – Countermelodies: A Memoir in Sonata Form
    • Jacqueline Acho – Cancer Culture: Fixing the Landscape by Infusing Empathy
    • Kathi N. Miner – The Committed Professor – My Fall from the Lectern to the Ward
    • Bridey Thelen-Heidel – Bright Eyes
    • Ginelle Testa – Make a Home Out of You
    • E. Adrienne Wilson – I’d Rather Be Dead Than Deaf: A Young Woman’s Journey with Liver Cancer
    • Lindsey Henke – When Skies Are Gray
    • Heidi Beierle – Heidi Across America – One Woman’s Journey on a Bicycle through the Heartland
    • Claudia Marseille – But You Look So Normal: Lost and Found in a Hearing World
    • Mary Jumbelic, M.D. – Here, Where Death Delights
    • Lisa Rhyne – Coming Out of the Metaphysical Closet
    • Tracy Mayo – Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self
    • Marsha Jacobson – The Wrong Calamity
    • David Vass – Liar, Alleged

    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.

    Please click here to visit our page to LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

    We will also be promoting this list in our Newsletter, which you can sign up for here!

    Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.

    The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2023 JOURNEY Awards is:

    Barbed: A Memoir

    By Julie Morrison

    Journey Awards for Overcoming Adversity in Narrative Non-Fiction Grand Prize Badge for Barbed by Julie Morrison

    See the full list of 2023 First Place Journey Winners here!

    We are now accepting submissions into the 2025 Journey Book Awards for Overcoming Adversity in Narrative Non-Fiction.

    Please click here for more information.

    Winners will be announced at the 2024 CIBA Awards Ceremony that is sponsored by the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

    April 3 – 6, 2025! Save the Date for Registration!

    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.

    Join us for our annual conference as we enter our second decade and discover why!

  • The 2024 Global Thriller Hall of Fame for High Stakes Suspense!

    The World is in Danger

    But your Global Thriller Novel can save it!

    Global Thriller

    ***Submit Your Novel Today!***

    You have until October 31st to enter the 2024 CIBAs before this message will self-destruct!

    We’re here to celebrate the past Grand Prize Winners that showed us just how high stakes the suspense can be!

    Roman Conspiracy cover

    Jake Fortina and the Roman Conspiracy
    By Ralph R. “Rick” Steinke

    Talk about a ripped-from-the headlines thriller in Jake Fortina and the Roman Conspiracy!

    In this multinational geopolitical thriller by Ralph R. “Rick” Steinke, a power-crazed Russian oligarch wants to usurp the current Russian dictator to take his place as the head of the government. He forms his own paramilitary force to steal priceless paintings from a Vatican church with plans to resell them for billions to fund his campaign. But why stop there? He also explodes illicit small-scale atomic weapons to further destabilize the Russian leader and cast himself as the country’s new czar.

    Meanwhile, a crazed U.S. right wing military adjutant buys loads of AK-47s from the Italian mafia to arm U.S. paramilitary groups intent on enforcing their own far-right views in America.

    Read More Here

    Hybrid Hysteria Cover

    Hybrid Hysteria
    By Charlie Robinson

    Two professors uncover a conspiracy to sterilize liberal Americans with specially-manufactured electric cars, in Charlie Robinson’s thriller, Hybrid Hysteria.

    Dr. Theresa Lauzon, endowed assistant professor at SUNY-Canton’s Department of Automotive Engineering, comes to Charlie “CC” Cavanaugh, university Chaplain and physics PhD, with two troubling revelations.

    First, while testing an electric car donated by the Gauss Hybrid Electric Automobile Company (GHEA), she’d discovered troubling spikes in its battery’s electromagnetic field. She connects these spikes to a rash of infertility and miscarriages along the Pacific coast, where GHEA cars have boomed in popularity.

    Second, Theresa is pregnant, and the father is GHEA’s technician-on-loan to SUNY-Canton, Jay Fish. And though Fish recently disappeared from campus, Theresa has much more complicated problems.

    Read More Here

     

    The Chameleon Cover

    The Chameleon
    By Ron McManus

    The Chameleon: A Jake Palmer Novel by Ron McManus takes on one of the most terrifying issues in the modern world: nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.

    Amidst the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan, the world’s superpowers recognize that both nations possess large nuclear arsenals, which intelligent, well-armed fanatics threaten to steal for their own nefarious purposes. If these weapons went off, they could easily lead to World War III. To prevent this, the U.S. eagerly takes on the role of supervising the security of these weapons in both countries.

    In this terrorism thriller, India and Pakistan clash over the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistan’s leaders decide to secretly deploy a variety of nuclear weapons to the front, sending them along backroads in unmarked trucks. But in a carefully planned attack, terrorists kidnap one of these vehicles containing three nuclear weapons, before substituting a precise duplicate truck to take its place. The theft is not discovered until the decoy truck reaches its destination.

    Read More Here

    Cover of William Maz's The Bucharest Dossier, Chanticleer Grand Prize Global Thrillers Winner 2020

    The Bucharest Dossier
    By William Maz

    Bill Hefflin is a man apart—apart from life, apart from his homeland, apart from love

    At the start of the 1989 uprising in Romania, CIA analyst Bill Hefflin—a disillusioned Romanian expat—arrives in Bucharest at the insistence of his KGB asset, code-named Boris. As Hefflin becomes embroiled in an uprising that turns into a brutal revolution, nothing is as it seems, including the search for his childhood love, which has taken on mythical proportions.

    With the bloody events unfolding at blinding speed, Hefflin realizes the revolution is manipulated by outside forces, including his own CIA and Boris—the puppeteer who seems to be pulling all the strings of Hefflin’s life.

    The Bourne Identity Meets John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

    Buy it here!

    Solstice Shadows
    By Avanti Centrae

    Something really nasty is afoot in the world as the Russians attempt to build a super quantum computer so powerful that it will be able to hack into America’s computer capabilities, bypassing even our most advanced protection and control or shut down every computer in the U.S.

    As we find out about halfway through Solstice Shadows: A VanOps Thriller, the second book in Avanti Centrae’s VanOps thriller series, they’ve run a test of their capabilities by using a prototype to shut down Manila in the Philippines, a city of nearly 14 million people. The test shuts off its electrical power, lights, traffic signals and causes its citizens to tear the city apart. A fine test case for its potential impact on the USA.

    All they need to complete their evil system is some rare superconductivity material that appears to have come from a meteorite that allegedly landed on Earth at roughly the same time as Moses led his people out of Egypt. The clue to its location is an ancient star map dating back to those times now in the possession of Maddy Marshall, the heroine of the VanOps’ first book. Also in her possession are slivers of the actual meteorite that she can activate with her mind, giving her the ability to meld with the ancient material and hurl deadly fireballs at an enemy.

    Read More Here

    The Moving Blade
    By Michael Pronko

    The Moving Blade by Michael Pronko won GRAND PRIZE in the CIBA 2018 Global Thriller Awards for Lab Lit and High Stakes Thrillers!

    What exactly was Bernard Mattson up to when he committed seppuku* at his Tokyo home – or, was it murder? This is just one of many questions Michael Pronko incites in readers in his latest novel, The Moving Blade.

    Another set of questions: What was so important about Mattson’s collection of rare Japanese shunga—centuries-old erotic art—that someone ransacked the house for it while his family attended his funeral? Or was it all about the significant role that the elderly Mattson had in formulating, then turning against, the SOFA** agreements, and the book he intended to publish about the unfairness of the agreements to Japan today?

    Read More Here


    Now that you’re set on your next reads, what are you waiting for? The only way to join this amazing list of Global Thriller 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!

    Submit to the CIBAs Today!

    Now is your chance to touch the hearts of readers everywhere. Your Thriller story deserves to be discovered, and you can submit to the 2023 Chatelaine Awards by the end of the month. Don’t miss this chance to give your book the recognition it deserves.

    The Global Thriller Awards is your chance to shine!

    The 2023 CIBA Grand Prize Winners!
    The 2023 CIBA Grand Prize Winners!

    And remember! Registration for the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference is open now! Space is limited and seats are already filling up. Sign up and see the latest updates here!

  • The 2024 Hemingway Hall of Fame for 20th and 21st Century Wartime Fiction

    The Past Always Impacts the Present

    Ernest Hemingway looking off to the right

    Enter by October 31 to be considered for the 2024 Hemingway Book Awards for Wartime Fiction!

    Wartime Fiction set in the twentieth century asks us to reflect most keenly on the most difficult times in our recent history. At Chanticleer, we are here to face war time history with the Hemingway Awards in Historical Fiction; Romance and Romantic Fiction; Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense Fiction of the time; Literary works and Satire and anything else that author imaginations can dream up.

    To read more about Ernest Hemingway, please click here. 

    Please note that fictional accounts of the United States Civil War should be submitted to the Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction. It is sobering to note that more human life was lost in the Civil War than in ALL of the wars, battles, and skirmishes that the U.S. has participated in added together. Civil wars are considered to be the most deadly of all wars.

    Historical Book Awards here at Chanticleer Reviews and the CIBAS.

    The CIBAs started with one historical fiction division, The Chaucer Book Awards, which split off the Goethe Book Awards for post-1750s historical fiction. Then the Goethe Book Awards split off a new division, the Hemingway Book Awards for Wartime Fiction.

    The Hemingway Awards might be young, but we already have Four Amazing Grand Prize Winners to share with you!

    The Silver Waterfall Cover

    The Silver Waterfall: A Novel of the Battle of Midway
    By Kevin Miller

    In The Silver Waterfall, author retired U.S. Navy Captain Kevin Miller reveals the intricate and deadly turns of the Battle of Midway, a combat shaped by transforming warfare, and one that would in turn shape the rest of WWII’s Pacific Theater.

    After their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy seeks to draw American aircraft carriers into an ambush, to secure Japanese power over the Pacific. In a time of great upheaval for warfare technology, aircraft carriers dominated both sea and sky. So, to destroy the USS Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet, Chūichi Nagumo— commander of the Japanese First Air Fleet— brings to bear his own four carriers, HIJMS Akagi, Hiryū, Kaga, and Soryu.

    But the Americans had cracked the Japanese communication codes, so as the First Air Fleet launches their provoking attack against the Midway Islands, the American carriers are already steaming into position. From June 4th to June 6th of 1942, planes filled the skies above the remote Pacific waters, both American and Japanese pilots dashing back and forth, knowing that either they sink the enemy’s carriers, or they’ll have none of their own to return to.

    Read More Here

    Running with Cannibals Cover

    RUNNING WITH CANNIBALS
    By Robert W. Smith

    Robert W. Smith tells the story of a forgotten war and the fractured peace that follows in his powerful historical fiction novel, Running with Cannibals.

    It has been said that “War is hell.” It has also been opined that “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” Running with Cannibals is a no-holds-barred, candid portrayal of a war that is glossed over in U.S. history, the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. It was the first war fought overseas by the U.S.

    Running with Cannibals begins with an unnamed man on the run from an unjust accusation bought with blood and money.

    Read more here!

    EO-N Cover

    EO-N
    By Dave Mason

    A young boy in Norway makes a discovery while playing with his dog, opening the mystery of EO-N by Dave Mason, a detective story spanning multiple decades and both sides of the Atlantic, a deep dive into the horrors of Nazi Germany, and a heartfelt love story.

    A small metal fragment leads to the discovery of a downed WWII twin-engine Mosquito fighter-bomber hidden in snow and glacial ice for nearly 75 years. The crash site yields an initial set of clues, one of which finds its way across the world to Alison Wiley, a biotech CEO in Seattle. Having recently lost her mother, and, a few years earlier, her brother in Afghanistan, she finds her days full of despair, but the discovery makes a distant connection to her long-lost grandfather, and she flies to Norway. There, she meets Scott Wilcox, a Canadian researcher assigned to investigate the discovery after his government learned that the crashed aircraft belonged to the Royal Canadian Air Force. Their attraction is both intellectual and emotional, but the quest to uncover the plane’s mysteries and the fate of Alison’s grandfather place any romance to the side.

    At first, the crash doesn’t appear exceptional, until certain contradictory and confusing clues emerge that make it clear that the circumstances that led to the plane’s fate were anything but simple.

    Read more here!

    THE QUISLING FACTOR
    By J. L. Oakley

    During World War II “quisling” became a byword for a particular type of traitor, one who not only betrays their own country but also actively collaborates with the invaders. The origin of the term was taken from an actual person, a Norwegian named Vidkun Quisling, who didn’t merely cooperate with the Nazis but actually headed a collaborationist regime in his own country.

    The Quisling Factor takes place in the immediate post-war period, as the Nuremberg Trials are gearing up in Germany. Norway is conducting its own post-war legal purge of collaborators at all levels of government.

    The story is a direct follow-up to the author’s award-winning World War II novel, The Jøssing Affair. This second novel focuses on the physical and emotional toll of war, and its precarious weight of peace on the survivors.

    Read more here!


    Now that you’re set on your next reads, what are you waiting for? The only way to join this amazing list of Hemingway Winners is to submit today!

    The Chanticleer Int'l Book Awards Overall Grand Prize sticker for the CIBAs

    Those who submit and advance will have the chance to win the Overall Grand Prize of the CIBAs and $1000!

    The Blue and Gold Best Book Awards for the CIBAs
    You know you want it…

     

    Are you a Chanticleer Author who has some good news to share? Let us know! We’re always looking for a reason to crow about Chanticleerians! Reach out with your news to info@ChantiReviews.com

  • The 2023 Somerset First Place Winner Roundup for Literary and Contemporary Fiction!

    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!

    The 2023 Somerset Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!

    Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Somerset Winners!

    A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

    David Fitz-Gerald – If Its the Last Thing I Do

    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.

    Read More Here

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    J.A. Wright – Eat and Get Gas

    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.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    B. Lynn Carter – Jus Breathe

    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.

    Read More Here

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Leslie Liautaud – Black Bear Lake

    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?

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    James Gish Jr. – When Blackbirds Dream

    Blue and Gold Somerset First Place Winner Badge for Best in Category

    Jennifer Gold – Halfway to You

    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.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Donna Norman-Carbone – All That Is Sacred

    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.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Nova Garcia – Not That Kind of Call Girl

    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?

    Find it Locally and on Amazon


    Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Somerset First Place Winners!

    Mainstream Contemporary Fiction Awards

    You can see our Spotlight on the Somerset Awards here!

    Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!

    The tiers of achievement for the CIBAs

    Got a great Fiction Book? The 2024 Somerset Book Awards are open through the end of October!

    Blue button that says Enter a Writing Contest
    Submit to the Somerset Awards Today!
  • The 2024 M&M Mystery and Mayhem Long List for Cozy and Not-so-Cozy Mysteries!

    The 2024 M&M Mystery and Mayhem Long List for Cozy and Not-so-Cozy Mysteries!

    Cozy Mystery Fiction AwardThe Mystery & Mayhem Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Light-Hearted and Cozy Mysteries. The M&M Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).

    Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring “mystery and mayhem,” amateur sleuthing, light suspense, travel mystery, classic mystery, British cozy, hobby sleuths, senior sleuths, or historical mystery, perhaps with a touch of romance or humor. We will put them to the test and choose the best among them. (For suspense, thriller, detective, crime fiction see our Clue Awards.)

    These titles have moved forward in the first look rounds from all 2024 M&M entries to the 2024 M&M Book Awards LONG LIST. These entries are now in competition for the 2024 M&M 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 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference

    A Wreath with the words "CAC 2025" on it to celebrate the Chanticleer Author's Conference!

    These titles are in the running for the SHORT LIST of the 2024 Mystery & Mayhem Book Awards novel competition for Cozy Mysteries!

    Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!

    • Tawn Skousen – Seashells and Scoundrels
    • Anna St. John – Clocked Out
    • A.J. McCarthy – Smoke and Secrets
    • Brooke Maddaleni – Next Door
    • Valerie Taylor – A Whale of a Murder
    • David T. Isaak – Things Unseen
    • Bob Kelly – Chicago Detective Jack Fallon in the Mystery of the Exotic Escort Murders
    • ML Barrs – Parallel Secrets
    • Claire Dowley – Mud
    • S.A. Reeves – The Bookshop Mysteries: A Bitter Pill: A Small Town Cozy Mystery
    • C.B. Wilson – Labradored to Death
    • Marlene M. Bell – A Hush at Midnight
    • E. W. Finke – The Sweet Bounty
    • Brooke Maddaleni – Let Me Go
    • MJ Mac – A Shiver on the River: A Kennedy Reeves Mystery
    • Sallie Barr Palmer – A Dinner to Die For
    • Andrea Barton – The Godfather of Dance
    • Charlotte Stuart – In$urance to Die For (A John Smith Mystery Book 2)
    • Don Stuart – Censure and Repeal: A Washington Statehouse Mystery
    • Patrick E. Craig – The Boy In Blue Denim
    • TK Sheffield – Model Ghost
    • Nancy Raven Smith – Bushwhacked in the Outback – A Land Sharks Cozy Mystery Adventure
    • Lori Roberts Herbst – Graven Images
    • Jennifer S. Alderson – Collecting Can Be Murder
    • Jordan Garde – Final Rest: A Windmerle Falls Mystery
    • Ann Philipp – The Zucchini Fairy Murder
    • Kris Courtney – Florida Retirement Is Murder
    • Gail Noble-Sanderson – A Cup of Revenge – A Drew Davies Railway Mystery – Book 2
    • Elizabeth Crowens – Bye, Bye Blackbird
    • Roxanne Dunn – Murder Richly Deserved
    • Jeanne Matthews – If Two Are Dead
    • M. K. Graff – Death in the Orchard: A Trudy Genova Mystery
    • Aaron Woolsey – The Butler Did It
    • Brandon Lawniczak – Lake Level
    • Timothy Stecker – The Moth
    • Joy Ann Ribar – The Medusa Murders
    • Shannon Bennett Riester – Heists and Horoscopes
    • Christine Knapp – Murder on the Books
    • Lorenzo Petruzziello – The Taste of Datura
    • Margaret A. Blenkush – Welcome to Bellechester
    • Mary Seifert – Creeps, Cache & Corpses
    • Robert Sells – An Affair with Murder
    • Kathleen Donnelly – Hunting The Truth
    • TK Sheffield – Model Wave
    • Tracy Carter – Lawyers, Dogs, and Money
    • Colette Tajemna – The Corpse in the Trash Room
    • D.R. Ransdell – Dervla Alarms the Nanas
    • Lyndsay Constable – The Puzzled Heiress
    • M. S. Spencer – In the Crosshairs: The Body on Leffis Key
    • Chris Chan – Nessie’s Nemesis
    • Steve Lindahl – Ginger’s Shoes
    • Rolynn Anderson – When Winds Howl
    • Karen Gilleland – Diamond and the French Blue
    • E. Alan Fleischauer – Sherlock and The Tiger: Book 2, The Egg and More
    • Michelle Bennington – Dumpster Dying
    • Jonny Thompson – The Limestone Manor
    • Miriam Verbeek – The Forest
    • Zaida Alfaro – In the Key of Dead: A Miami Music Mystery
    • Kari Bovee – The Pryce of Conceit
    • L. J. Aldon – Riddle of the Haunted Hoard
    • Lori Robbins – Murder in Fourth Position
    • Luke Swanson – Curtains on A Christmas Carol
    • Sharon Lynn – Death Takes a Fall: A Cotswold Crimes Mystery

    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.

    Please click here to visit our page to LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

    We will also be promoting this list in our Newsletter, which you can sign up for here!

    Congratulations once more to the 2023 M&M Grand Prize Winner

    A Haunting at Linley

    By Michelle Cox

    Blue and gold badge recognizing A Haunting at Linley by Michelle Cox for winning the 2023 Mystery & Mayhem Grand Prize

    Click here to see the full list of 2023 M&M Book Award Winners for Cozy Mysteries.

    We are now accepting submissions into the 2025 M&M Book Awards for Suspense and Thriller Mysteries.

    Please click here for more information.

    Winners will be announced at the 2024 CIBA Awards Ceremony that is sponsored by the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

    April 3 – 6, 2025! Save the Date for Registration!

    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.

    Join us for our annual conference as we enter our second decade and discover why!

     

  • The 2023 First Place Global Thriller Roundup for High Stakes Suspense!

    Global ThrillerThe Global Thriller Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of High Stakes Thrillers. The Grand Prize Winner, Ralph R. ‘Rick’ Steinke’s book, Jake Fortina and the Roman Conspiracy, will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Global Thriller contest page year ’round!

    The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the continued love and promotion for your book!

    The 2023 Global Thriller Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!

    Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Global Thriller Winners!

    A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

    D.L. Wilburn Jr. – The God Protocol: Dragon

     

    In the simmering summer of 2023, as the United States and China silently battle for supremacy in Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence, the world teeters on the brink of a technological singularity. Amidst this high-stakes arena, George Isaacson, a seemingly inconsequential social media conspiracy theorist, stumbles upon a trail of secrets. He spins a tale weaving together NASA’s clandestine findings, whispers of First Contact with extraterrestrial beings, and a shadowy global cover-up. Skepticism meets his claims, yet as the veil of deception lifts, George’s narrative reveals startling truths, thrusting him into the spotlight as an unlikely hero.

    ‘The God Protocol’ is not just a novel; it’s a technothriller odyssey that interlaces the enigmatic lore of the Anunnaki with the cutting-edge realms of AI Sentience and Nanotechnology. It’s a story of international conspiracy and cover-ups, set in a near future where advanced technology blurs the lines between myth and reality. Prepare for a journey that escalates into an awe-inspiring finale, challenging the very fabric of existence and leaving readers gasping for air.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Glenn Dyer – Trust No One

     

    Algiers. Winter 1943. Conor Thorn is devastated. He’s been fired from the OSS. His wife, Emily, has been fired from MI6. They allowed their morals to bend certain truths concerning the outcome of their last mission. Forever dedicated to defeating Axis powers, these skilled operatives jump at the chance to secretly help General Eisenhower deal with a political time bomb threatening Allied harmony and to redeem their honorable standing. To recover a rumored archive holding the truth about an assassination plot, they must travel deep into perilous Axis territory.

    In the crosshairs of those determined to keep the information out of Allied hands, Conor and Emily fall victim to a violent assault. Though the resulting injuries leave him severely concussed and confused, Conor refuses to stand down while his beloved ventures deeper into danger.

    Can Conor and Emily piece together a political puzzle in time to keep Allied unity from fracturing?

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Mark James – Friendship Games

    An American aircraft carrier blows up and sinks in the Persian Gulf. Was it an accident? A terrorist attack? Does it matter?

    Maybe not.

    Not after decades of hostility and brinkmanship between the United States and Iran. And certainly not after a known Iranian-funded and supported terrorist organization launches an attack on an American naval facility in the middle of rescue operations.
    Iran is convinced that the United States is about to embark on a full-scale war and seek nothing short of regime change. They aren’t wrong. Iran strikes first. And they have some tricks up their sleeve. But nothing ever goes to plan.

    This book is a warning.

    The next war may be like no other in American history.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Randall Krzak – Ultimate Escalation

     

    Punjabi militants seek to distance themselves from Indian and Pakistani dominance and interference. With the dissolution of British India in 1947, families were ripped apart as the Punjabi region was split between the two countries. Limited attacks within each country caused further persecution and heartache. The militants have no idea how to achieve their desires–until the appearance of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Nikolaev, a disgraced Spetsnaz colonel. He offers the militants a means to spark a conflict between the two nuclear powers. Russian subs sold on the black market and manned by Iranian and Russian sailors will surface off the coasts of the two countries and destroy Karachi and Mumbai. Propaganda machines will levy accusations against each country, leading to escalation of hostilities, pushing the countries to the brink of nuclear war. The Bedlam organization fields their three teams to counter the violence and seek to restore calm before it’s too late. Will they be successful, or will South Asia become a smoking ruin?

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Susan Rogers and John Roosen – Cobra Pose

    Australia is a surfers’ paradise … but this nefarious surfing on the ‘net’ … will destroy the global financial system. It’s not just a rippling ‘scam’ job. Has Australia been infiltrated at levels they’ve never known?

    Elaina Williams uses a Cobra Pose in her Yoga studio to boost her energy – she will need it! Elaina’s father, Edward, is in trouble. He’s disappeared.

    As a solicitor and now yoga instructor, Elaina drags Ric, a man she’s fallen for, into the bursting web of techno-thrilling intrigue.

    Ric Peters has just returned from a disastrous trip to Indonesia. Ric bills himself as a photojournalist. Elaina suspects he shoots more than just photographs. Ric has insight into the journey he and Elaina must take. He knows Elaina isn’t ready for what’s going to happen. There are too many moving parts for him to control.

    Time is running out before The Cobra and The Wolf strike with their heist. They are extending their fangs towards Australia’s ‘golden coastline’ to bite into and destabilise financial institutions worldwide.

    Find it on Amazon


    Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Global Thrillers First Place Winners!

    Global Thriller

    You can see our Spotlight on the Global Thriller Grand Prize Winners, including Ralph R ‘Rick’ Steinke’s incredible book Jake Fortina and the Roman Conspiracy here.

    Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!

    The tiers of achievement for the CIBAs

    Got a great High Stakes Suspense Thriller? The 2024 Global Thriller Book Awards are open through the end of October!

    Blue button that says Enter a Writing Contest
    Submit to the Global Thriller Awards Today!
  • Ten Days Remain! The Somerset Awards and the Humor and Satire Awards!

    The Final Fiction Divisions of this years Award cycle close in less than 2 weeks!

    10 days left to submit!

    Don’t let your book miss out!

    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!

    The Humor and Satire Award for Allegorical Fiction , The Somerset Awards for Contemporary and Literary Fiction and are still open!

    Best Book Grand Prize for the Chanticleer Int'l Book AwardsCongratulations 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

    A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

    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

    A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

    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.

    The tiers of achievement for the CIBAs (Chanticleer Int'l Book Awards)

    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.

    Let’s celebrate exceptional storytelling together!

    Blue button that says Enter a Writing Contest

    Your book deserves to be discovered

    Don’t Delay! Enter Today!

    The Humor and Satire Awards and The Somerset Awards 

     

  • The 2023 Humor and Satire First Place Winners Roundup!

    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!

    The 2023 Humor and Satire Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!

    Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Humor and Satire Winners!

    A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

    Eileen O’Finlan – All the Furs and Feathers

    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?

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Allyson Rice – The Key to Circus-Mom Highway

    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.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Marco Ocram – The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair

    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.

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Lou Dischler – The Rising

    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.

    Read more here!

    Steven Mayfield – The Penny Mansions

    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!

    Find it Locally and on Amazon

    Tom Strelich – Water Memory

    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?

    Find it Locally and on Amazon


    Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Humor and Satire First Place Winners!

    Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!

    The tiers of achievement for the CIBAs

    Got a great Fiction Book? The 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards are open through the end of October!

    Blue button that says Enter a Writing Contest
    Submit to the Humor and Satire Awards Today!

     

  • The 2023 Hemingway Book Awards First Place Roundup for 20th and 21st c. Wartime Fiction

    Ernest Hemingway looking off to the rightThe Hemingway Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of 20th Century Wartime Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Kevin Miller’s book, The Silver Waterfall, will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Hemingway 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!

    The 2023 Hemingway Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!

    Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Hemingway Winners!

    Blue and Gold Badge for the First Place Hemingway Award Winners

    A Gold Ribbon dividing this section from the next

    J.L. Oakley – The Brisling Code

     

    An experienced intelligence agent at 22, Tore Haugland faces certain danger when he accepts an assignment in occupied Norway knowing that his predecessor was killed by the Gestapo only a week before. The dying agent left a mysterious message in his interruption code that London calls the “Brisling Code.” London wants Haugland to find out what it means as well as to gather information on the expansion of the U boat base in Bergen. Haugland is sent to work at a drafting office in a shipyard. His mission is jeopardized when a ruthless SS officer, Hans Becker, with his own secrets, is alerted to his presence by a traitor at the Verks. Becker will do anything to find him. If Haugland can’t discover the meaning of the Brisling Code in time, it could cost him his life and expose the members of the local resistance he works with. If he does, it could hurt the people he has grown to care about. But what if the message was written down wrong?

    From Chanticleer:

    In The Brisling Code, a fast-paced first installment of her historical thriller series, Oakley weaves a brilliant portrayal of the perils met by the Norwegian Resistance during WWII.

    Layered perspectives—from resistance workers, traitors, and even an SS Officer—create a rich world through which readers can understand the sacrifices that were made to free our world from the tyranny of Nazi Germany.

    Immersed in volatile Nazi-occupied Bergen, Norway, fearless young intelligence agent Tore Haugland and his team of organizers work tirelessly to protect the essential work of the Norwegian resistance.

    Haugland’s task is to uncover the plans for the expansion of the German Uboat base with inside help at a shipyard. Also charged in unveiling the meaning behind a mysterious message sent by his murdered predecessor, Haugland navigates the treacherous waters of Norway—a mere haunting of the beautiful city it once was before Nazi occupation. Readers can “almost taste the danger” as our hero moves from one treacherous predicament to the next. Haugland’s mission risks not only his own life, but the lives of every friend and connection he makes.

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    Kathryn Gauci – In the Shadow of the Pyrenees

    When France declares war on Germany, the villagers of the sleepy village of Mont-Saint-Jean have no idea how much their lives will be impacted. At first they find themselves helping a trickle of British soldiers and airmen heading into Spain, but within months, that trickle has turned into a never-ending flow. Desperate French and foreign Jews, together with ordinary men and women evading Vichy’s harsh laws in search of freedom, either attempt to flee and join de Gaulle’s Secret Army in North Africa, or hide and regroup in readiness for D-Day. Before they know it, they are drawn into the shadowy world of escape networks in one of France’s harshest and most dangerous mountainous terrains, where at every turn they face deportation or death if caught.

    Rich in detail and based on true events in Occupied France, In the Shadow of the Pyrenees weaves together a powerful and vivid tableau of characters, a tortured love affair, and the heroism of countless helpers. It is a story that conjures up the voices of the past and will take you on a journey in which the ensuing upheavals continue to resonate in the villagers’ lives long after the war has ended.

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    Michael J Cooper – Crossroads of Empire

    This work is not yet released, but the previous book in the series was the 2022 Dante Rossetti Grand Prize Winner.

    Wages of Empire

    In the summer of 1914, sixteen-year-old Evan Sinclair leaves home to join the Great War for Civilization. Little does he know that, despite the war raging in Europe, the true source of conflict will emerge in Ottoman Palestine, since it’s from Jerusalem where the German Kaiser dreams to rule as Holy Roman Emperor.

    Filled with such historical figures as Gertrude Bell, T.E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, Faisal bin Hussein and Chaim Weizmann, Wages of Empire follows Evan through the killing fields of the Western Front where he will help turn the tide of a war that is just beginning, and become part of a story that never ends.

    From Chanticleer:

    Michael J. Cooper’s latest historical fiction novel, Wages of Empire, draws readers into the perilous journey of sixteen-year-old Evan Sinclair and his father into WW1. On this path, their lives will intersect with such historical figures as TE Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, the Arab nationalist Faisal ibn Hussein, the proto-Nazi and advisor to the German kaiser Guido von List, and Kaiser Wilhelm II himself.

    Set in the summer of 1914 we find Evan living in the American southwest where his father moved the family from England for his Oxford sabbatical. Evan struggles to cope with his mother’s death in childbirth and yearns to escape his father’s controlling grip. As war breaks out in Europe, Evan decides to leave home and join the fight, without telling his father.

    By the time Clive realizes Evan is missing, the war is in full swing. Clive returns to England to search for Evan and reactivates his commission at the War Office in London. There, Clive uses every means available to find Evan. Meanwhile, Evan has made his way across the Atlantic and into France with the hope of joining the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), but instead he is arrested by the Paris police as a possible German collaborator. He escapes, but by mistake, crosses into occupied Belgium where he barely survives a German artillery barrage with poison gas. Joining the Flemish resistance, he is badly wounded after helping to flood the lowlands, a deciding factor in stopping the German army. After recovering in a BEF hospital in France, Evan begins a romance with a beautiful young nurse just before he is discharged to return to England by hospital ship.

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    Ivan Luis Hernandez – Isla Vulnerable

    In late 1950’s Cuba, the island’s allure as an elite global paradise was cloaked by a revolution that brought down its rich and powerful.

    When a poor native farm boy named Victor Gomez is suddenly orphaned and adopted by one of the most influential families in his hometown, he meets and falls for Sarita Rodriguez—a supermodel and media empire heiress—just before Fidel Castro overthrows President Fulgencio Batista and takes control of the island. After Castro raids Victor’s new family’s estate and imprisons his father, Victor narrowly escapes and flees to the US where he accepts an unconventional, deadly deal as a spy to save his country. Still just a teen, Victor finds himself in a cycle of betrayal—struggling to find truth and purpose, while torn between protecting his now powerless parents, finding his disbanded biological siblings, and secretly pursuing Sarita as she rises to international fame from New York.

    Based on the true story of the author’s family, Isla Vulnerable weaves a captivating tale of love, sacrifice, and human resilience in the face of extraordinary historical events—including the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, the CIA’s covert operations in foreign affairs, Operation Mongoose, and the assassination of JFK. A dynamic cast of real-life-inspired characters, meticulous attention to historical detail, edge-of-your-seat spy scenes, and a love story that transcends social classes compose an ideologically-unbiased, heartwarming, and cinematic journey in this author’s first published book.

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    Linda Stewart Henley – Kate’s War

    Twenty-year-old Kate is poised to launch into a long-anticipated life of independence when Britain declares war in 1939. After that announcement, her dream of escaping the London suburb she grew up in and pursuing a singing career is quashed: she must stay put with her family and prepare for bombing and possible invasion by Germany.

    Living in these anxious times, Kate strives to achieve balance in her life, though a speech disability interferes with her singing and a failed romance adds to her distress. But when a young Jewish girl whose parents have been deported comes to her for help, Kate’s goals change. Taking on a responsibility she never could have imagined, she learns that freedom and survival cannot be taken for granted—and as new responsibilities outweigh earlier goals, she learns that assisting others to escape unspeakable evil requires new perspective, as well as courage she didn’t know she had.

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    Jerena Tobiasen – Tsarina’s Crown

    Tsarina's Crown Cover

    In 1915, Simon Temple, a young naval officer from northeast England, finds himself aboard RMS Guardian, patrolling the North Sea as part of the Germany blockade. By midyear, he’s in Petrograd, Russia on a private assignment for King George. The three-month task turns into three years, embroiling him in the intrigues of two royal families, Russian politics and British espionage. As the Russian revolution consumes the country, Simon’s cover is threatened, and his safety compromised. He must escape the chaos before he’s captured, but his scheme becomes complicated when two others unexpectedly join him in a hasty departure.

    High seas adventures. Russian vistas. Royal exposé. Political conspiracy. The stuff of which spies are made. Tsarina’s Crown is a fast-paced, historical drama that leads the reader from World War I at sea to the desperation of the Russian revolution. Full of action and intrigue. And just a little romance.

    From Chanticleer:

    Jerena Tobiasen delivers a sharp, first-rate novel in Tsarina’s Crown, first installment in The Nightingale and Sparrow Chronicles, capturing a precise panorama of Russian politics and British espionage during a delicate period in time.

    The year is 1915 and Simon Temple, a young naval officer aboard the RMS Guardian— a British Royal Navy Ship— patrols the North Sea for questionable communications and marine activity. Months later, he is entrusted by the British crown to serve as a liaison on a covert mission in Petrograd, Russia. Simon is careful not to blow his cover as a young aristocrat while he is thrust into the world of international politics, the ruthless Russian Revolution, and becomes caught right in the middle of two powerful royal families.

    The mission turns out to be longer than Simon anticipated, and his life quickly becomes threatened as he tries to navigate a dangerous political labyrinth, all the while hoping to unearth the spy information that his King requires of him. But as the precarious wheel of mayhem and chaos churns in Russia, Simon’s only way to survive is to escape, realizing that his wit and intelligence might not save him from the tense political atmosphere. Things become even more complicated when he is joined by two other people who hope to flee.

    Read More Here

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    William McClain – Alice’s War

    Weymouth, England 1939. War changes everything. For grandson Martin, coming of age under the backdrop of World War II. For Sonja, the Jewish refugee he’s drawn to, who left her family in Germany only to face new dangers in England. And for Martin’s friend, Ellis, confronting a war similar to the one that drove his father to alcoholism.
    Recently widowed, Alice must set aside her long-awaited chance to recreate her life on her own terms when the war places her two grandchildren in her care. She finds herself revisiting the tragedies she faced as a mother, as she navigates personal aspiration, loss, and the importance of family.
    Alice’s War is not a story of decorated air pilots or daring resistance fighters. It is instead a story of ordinary people facing fear and loss. As outside forces tear Alice’s family and community apart, she quietly gathers and reforms their sustaining bonds.
    Set in the town of Weymouth against the grand backdrop of England’s Jurassic Coast and with a front-seat view of the unfolding drama, Alice’s War immerses the reader in a time unlike any in modern history.
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    Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Hemingway First Place Winners!

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