The Wessex Collective: 25 books

In this intriguing book John Wheatcroft, contemplating a long and brilliant career as a poet, both discusses and demonstrates the many mysteries, experiences and depth of humanity that go into making a poem.

What exists after death? Cassy is finding out. She has consciousness, and a form. It’s light and easily moved around. But she is shocked to find other light forms that she knew on Earth and one in particular that had stalked her and then died in a motorcycle accident. The Counselor for new entrants...

These nine stories describe people who live on the margins of society, people who are often oppressed and always ignored. These stories give them voice and let the reader into their worlds on the edge.

From the strangling of a midwife perceived to be a witch in Scotland in the 1880s to thwarted love and the tragedy of incest in West Virginia during the depression thence to Denver on the eve of the sixties, accurate history is enhanced by elements of magical realism in this tale of five generations that is as ancient as the Greek tragedies and as modern as the daily news.

The close of the Nazi death camps was a beginning rather than an end for  those who  survived.  Told through the eyes of a child of Holocaust survivors, The Gift  lets us  feel the pain and the courage that reaches into the decades beyond the war. Compelling and insightful. A memorable read. –Barb Lundy, poet

In The Return, two orphaned sisters return to their childhood home, thirty years after their parents murder hoping to find out what really happened. The perpetrator is dead, but will those who were with them talk? Lydia, a yoga teacher, feels her mother's spirit asking "Why?" Margie, a recent...

Triple Vision is the perfect title for this collection. The author sees life through the eyes of a philosopher, a painter, a poet. As a widely read student of philosophy she knows that, before finding answers to life's mysteries, the seeker must figure out the right questions. As a painter she...

A formidable sequence of poems in a variety of poetic styles, which cast an ironic and penetrating eye upon the vision that science, and particularly mathematics, can explain all of the great mysteries of the universe.

A former hospice and hospital chaplain and pastor or rural congregations, Brian Backstrand has witnessed first hand some of the slow unraveling of the social and economic fabric of small town and rural America. He and his wife, Marilee, spent the first year of their married life in rural eastern Kansas...

Do you think you are smarter than a headhunter?  Do you think you could win a battle against cannibals as well as overcome doubts from your ungrateful fellow warriors about your leadership?  Do you believe in emerald winds, ruby-eyed bees, silver birds of ghosts and love without end? Brother of...

A seemingly peaceful village at the edge of Oxford seethes with the unspoken tensions and frustrations of a group of neighbors. A disparate group of women including a visiting American professor's wife, a school headmistress, a young recluse, a hairdresser and a fanatic churchgoer, react in wildly...

As he does with his earlier novels, Burnham takes his time in skillfully creating his characters so that by the end, the readers know them inside out, down to their raw hearts. Some characters suffer a transformation; others don’t; but each word and action count and stay true to them, making them...

When Allied Forces were engaging Rommel in North Africa during World War Two, as usual the frontline troops had the heaviest casualties. So when Act. Sgt. Michael Santini is successful in almost single-handedly guiding his depleted and miss-matched international Special Forces squad through a rear-guard...

The literary fiction novel opens with a shocking scene: In the small town of Waska, Maine, retired professor Samuel Jellerson, while walking in the woods one day, witnesses an despicable act--a priest sexually abusing a young boy. Jellerson thinks he recognizes the priest, but instead of notifying...