Bøger udgivet af Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has lived her whole life under the mythic bluff called Maiden Leap in a scenic river town. Her contented life is turned inside out when her former high school girlfriend Lucy returns to town as a graduate of a gay conversion therapy program. Now Kate must cope with her guilt and anger over how she and Lucy parted.As Kate struggles to balance her marriage to her reliable husband and her friendship with mercurial Lucy, their old flame is rekindled and a town secret is uncovered. Kate must learn how to navigate a new world of possibilities, confront her moral conundrums, and solve the age-old mystery surrounding Maiden Leap.

Based on more than three decades as a volunteer in the world of animal welfare and founder of one of the earliest high-volume, low-cost neuter spay facilities in the nation, Delluomo puts into words her passion for the plight of unwanted animals, and her frustration with the fact that euthanasia has been the standard approach to the century-old tragedy of pet overpopulation in America. Upon her decision to tackle pet overpopulation and euthanasia, Delluomo describes her surprise and dismay that local veterinarians, and the Oklahoma State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners, who she believed would be allies, would indeed become bitter enemies of a project designed to save animal lives. Along the way, Delluomo questions the mentality of a fragmented humane movement which embraces no-kill shelters while arguing that breeding laws are a waste of time. By an unexpected investigation and ruling of the Federal Trade Commission against Oklahoma veterinarians, which Delluomo refers to as "divine intervention," the neuter/spay clinic is able to survive the harassment of the veterinarians and the OSBVME. However, in a surprise ending, once again the Board and its corrupt investigator, with multiple conflicts of interest, go after Lawton citizens and the Animal Birth Control Clinic in a report of the investigation of the city-operated animal shelter rather than those he was enlisted to investigate. Delluomo describes the periods of burn-out and feelings of failure that are an integral part of lending one''s life to the cause of animal welfare.

Bullying is no good,” Roy stated with conviction, as a classroom full of fourth-graders stared at him in rapt attention. “Other kids can be mean. They make fun of you for anything that is different. They call you names and make you feel bad about yourself. And that’s no good. They tell you things that aren’t true, but it still hurts.” They told him he was stupid. They told him he was worthless. They were wrong.Roy Irwin was institutionalized as a child and bullied throughout his young life because of learning disabilities and a speech impediment. Most people thought that he would never amount to anything. But Roy proved his critics wrong when he learned to read at the age of fifty. A decade later, Lauren Filarsky got to know Roy Irwin when he fulfilled a life dream by learning to train horses in the round pen on her parents’ ranch. Roy used his accomplishments to inspire hundreds of students to never give up on their dreams. He became an inspirational speaker in the local schools, explaining bullying to kids and helping them deal with bullies. These are Lauren’s memories of her friendship with this remarkable man.

Tilda has been angry with the Power and its mages ever since Pa died. Why didn't the mages use the Power to save him?Determined to find out, she sails to Ring Isle with her Uncle Vanya, steward to the mage Silviu of Ambak. But finding answers isn't easy, especially when a rogue mage attempts to steal all the Power of the five rings for himself and leaves the remaining four mages trying to cope with the aftermath of the attack.When Tilda tries to return a snake torc to Silviu, she is accidentally pulled through a Power-fueled portal and finds herself in Ambak. There, she realizes she's the only one who can find the hidden ring of Ambak to restore the balance of Power to all the mages. As she tackles this challenging quest, Tilda discovers more about herself than she could ever imagine.

With the help of sixty-year-old black jazz man Lucius, Mary Kaye O'Donnell, an eighteen-year-old Irish-American woman and aspiring jazz singer in Chicago, finds her way toward dealing with an unwanted pregnancy and the death of Sister Michaeline, her voice coach, jazz mentor, and only guide through the bedlam of her childhood.Mary Kaye's neighbor, Judge Engelmann, introduced her to the work of James Baldwin and the nuns exposed her to the burgeoning civil rights movement, but Lucius is the first black person Mary Kaye comes to really know. They bond over Sister Michaeline's untimely death. Over time, Lucius helps Mary Kaye launch her career as a singer in his jazz band. He also gives her Sister Michaeline's diary from her early cloistered years, saying it was the nun's wish. In reading the diary and in conversations with Lucius and Judge Engelmann, Mary Kaye discovers disillusioning aspects and secrets of her beloved mentor.This is Mary Kaye's coming-of-age story as she weighs her options based on the diary, her faith, and her music, set against the background of illegal abortion and child abandonment in the 1963 Chicago world of civil rights and interracial jazz. It is entirely a work of fiction, but in today's political climate one could imagine something similar becoming real.

A sequel to Shell Game, Darren--socially awkward, exiled noblewoman turned pirate queen--and Lynn sorta kinda Darren's slave girl, sorta kinda Darren's life coach, and altogether the bossiest backseat helmsman that ever set foot on a pirate ship are at it . . . again.Darren receives a message delivered by her dying brother pleading for her to warn their father about a traitor. Meaning Darren has to return home to Torasan Isle, and to the father who keeps sending assassins after her. Lynn thinks it's crazy, insane, and obviously certain death for Darren, and is not overly happy about the idea. As usual, Lynn is right and chaos ensues.

LodeStar is a collection of poems that seeks to juxtapose the light and dark moments of life. Patricia Taylor Wells explores the longing of a broken heart as well as the magical power of infatuation. She addresses the complexities of faith, hope, and loss alongside the simplicity of creation. Like a light guiding us out of darkness, there is no better lodestar than a poem.

Dear Sophie is the continuing memoir of The Jagged Years of Ruthie J. as Ruth fights to get enrolled into medical school. She finally succeeds by being one of a few students to be accepted at a new type of medical school at the University of Calgary. Being admitted turns out to be the easy part as she continues to face sexual harassment and discrimination during her schooling. Told in letters to her niece Sophie, Ruth weaves a feminist story of perseverance and determination for equality.Several male doctors did their best to get Ruth kicked out of the program, but she persevered. She finished her residency and opened her own medical practice despite being blocked at almost every step and clashing with the established medical community.Ruth's story covers almost half a century up the present, all the while using her experiences, especially in the medical community as a means to show Sophie how to live a happy, feminist life.

Iola Boggs escapes a small-minded village and is proud that she becomes a non-combat pilot during World War II. Iola meets Jim Lewis, who never served in the war but contributed in his own way to the war effort. They marry in post-war Philadelphia and raise a family against the backdrop of the paranoid era of Joseph McCarthy. Their differences plus a need for fulfillment propels them away from each other. Illicit liaisons and grief bring them life-changing insights. Part historical, part family saga, Iola's story is of resilience, diversity, and self-discovery.

After Emily Harris'' recent divorce, she returns to her hometown, where she renews her relationship with her exotic grandmother Eleanor, against the wishes of her mother Elaine, with whom she has her own fraught relationship. Eleanor, arch and secretive, has a passion she wishes to imbue in Emily — but Eleanor dies before the mystery is revealed in full. She leaves Emily an important clue: a small hand-loomed tapestry, possibly made by an ancestor. In an act of abandon that shocks even herself, Emily seduces her childhood neighbor and nemesis, Carwyn. Fleeing to the Welsh Marches to sort out her motivations, she discovers a branch of the family kept secret by her grandmother. With the aid of her newfound relatives, she searches for the keys to solving the mystery of the tapestry.

When sixty-three-year-old Alma, a failure at all she undertakes, decides to run away from her controlling and impatient husband, the result, like most of her efforts, is a disaster. She ends up in rehab in Glen Willow Gardens nursing home among the other "inmates" who mostly suffer from some form of dementia.As Alma recovers from both an accident and a subsequent stroke, her kindness and humor lead her to enjoy unfamiliar successes in caring for herself and others. She also finds friendship with a lonely gardener and with the man who was responsible for her accident. When it is time to choose her path into the future, she leaves Glen Willow Gardens a stronger, more independent woman

The Uh-Oh Squad describes the 1970s working environment of Terros, a Phoenix, Arizona drug abuse agency. Anecdotes provide insight into the lives of staff employed at the agency. The book also provides analysis of categories of drugs and explains the effects of different substances on some of the people who use them, including drugs available now on the street. Terros is still providing mental and medical care for people with substance abuse problems.

It was Spring of 1959 and the Chinese occupation of Tibet was in full swing. In the midst of all the turmoil and unease was Sudha Johorey, wife of the political officer in charge of the Indian Mission in Yatung, worried about the state of affairs for her beloved Tibet, the souring relationship between India and China and above all her friend, HH The Dalai Lama who was rumored to have left Lhasa for sanctuary in India. Thus begins the extraordinary journey of a young woman and her unlikely friendship with HH The Dailai Lama, her adventures as a diplomat's wife across India, Afghanistan, and the jungles of frontier states of her country and her unique and personal journey with the teachings of the Buddha. Toppled World is a moving personal account of the life of Sudha Johorey and a rare glimpse into the events that shaped India in the early years of independence as well as her own spiritual philosophy, as recounted to her dear friend Susan Murphy through stories and memories.

At the age of twelve, Eva Salomon becomes disillusioned about all the "isms" raging through her world. Crushed by her father's rigid Jewish orthodoxy and by the cruelties of a burgeoning Nazi regime, she renounces all belief systems, and even belief itself. Five years later, when she and her father leave Germany for Palestine, she's still a skeptic, yet hopeful about a fresh start in an unborn country. But her yearning for unfettered freedom soon puts her at odds with collective pressures in the new-old homeland. Eva finds love with a man who is anything but "kosher." Duncan Rees is a British constable in the Palestine Police Force. As a gentile, he's taboo even in the secular circles of a society forging its new nationalist identity. What's more, he represents the British Mandate government, a regime seen to increasingly impede Zionist dreams for a Jewish state in the contested country. And so the relationship hits obstacles right from the start.Set during complex upheaval of Palestine in the 1930s and '40s, Eva Salomon's War tells of the struggle to find a faith that doesn't blind, a love that doesn't lie and solid human truths in the midst of ideological ferment.

Jean and Red, librarians in San Francisco and life partners, have traveled the world but found their paradise in a lovely village in Mexico. Young and influenced by 1960s idealism, they decide to build a dream house there in their old age. When they retire in 1993 and begin building the house, they encounter a new Mexico filled with political corruption, police brutality and violence against women. A serial murderer is loose in the village, inspiring Red and Jean to attempt arming and defending the women of Mexico.This complex and exciting literary thriller brings many perspectives to the reader: the changing roles of men and women in Mexico, the violence of third-world men, the endemic political corruption of the wealthy ruling class and its hit men, the ancient Indian cosmos and its fiestas, the world of Mexican brujos and their magical powers. Moving from palaces of the wealthy to the huts of brujos to the most criminal haunts of Mexico today, the novel challenges the power of Red and Jean's feminism and first-world liberalism. For them, however, the effort is harrowing: can they save the village women? Will they even get out alive?

In T.K.'s third installment of poetry and prose, the author takes a philosophical look at life upon growing old. One can picture an old woman sitting on a stump or bale of hay, wearing a wry smile, chuckling over people and the silly things they do as in "You Can't Fix Stupid . . . I've Tried." T.K. is a little more reflective in "All You Can Own" and "Don't Look Back." The short story "Winston" relates the struggles of an orphan to survive on his own in the west, with a little help from a wise old cow hand.As with her previous two books, T.K.'s poetry doesn't follow any "rules," but are often stream of consciousness thoughts written down as they come to mind. In addition, her poems contain a kernel of truth in as much as the poems come from some place far away and long ago in her childhood.

By the time Patricia Taylor Wells arrived in Paris to study at the Sorbonne during the summer of 1968, the political unrest in May that almost collapsed the French government had been subdued. Or so she thought. On the 50th Anniversary of the May 1968 revolt, Patricia takes us on a tour of Paris during that summer of unrest and recounts how she adjusted to living in a foreign country for the first time, from staying in a dorm run by nuns to getting caught in the student-led resurgence on Bastille Day.

Temple novice Katia wants nothing more than to become a priest in the Temple of the Triple Gods. She tries hard to do the right thing, but she’s on her last chance to convince Elder Sevanya, the King’s Priest, that she can do the job. While she’s belatedly setting up the incense to prove she’s a competent acolyte, Katia overhears the king’s brother plotting to kill the king. She steals the Kingstone to protect it and to deliver it to the true heir with a message: the killer is after him too.Not knowing who to trust, Katia keeps her mission secret. Her theft of the precious stone puts a price on her head and she disguises herself as a boy to undertake the dangerous journey across sea and land to the true heir’s palace. Doing the right thing just got a lot harder. Will the Triple Gods forgive her?

Does saving a life always mean preserving it, or does it sometimes mean letting go? When Gail Gilmore’s beloved dog Chispa is diagnosed with Canine Cognitive Dysfunction, her first instinct is to fight for Chispa’s life; to do everything possible to bring the symptoms of this neurologically debilitating condition under control.But treatments fail, and Chispa’s symptoms worsen. Faced with many emotionally complicated questions and difficult ethical decisions, Gail repeatedly visits the one place where she believes she might find the spiritual guidance and wisdom needed to make the best choice for Chispa—a tiny, extraordinary church in St. Johnsbury, Vermont called the Dog Chapel. Within the simple beauty of the chapel, its walls deeply layered with overlapping photographs and anonymous notes from thousands of previous visitors to dogs loved and lost, Gail seeks and eventually finds both answers and peace in the wise and loving words of the unknown people she comes to consider her tribe.A story of unconditional love and devotion, Dog Church is also a story of finding comfort in faith and the ways in which the emotional threads of love and grief can bind complete strangers together for brief moments in time in ways that are ultimately life-changing.