Channel 1 — March 19, 2024

Set in Hawaii, this heartwarming book and its lovable characters offer adults and children helpful ways to discuss and handle stress."Why is Pono not Pono Today?" is a book where kids of all ages easily identify with the normally happy Pono the Bull. Pono snaps after others are mean to him. His friend Kuleana notices what happens and helps to quickly bring back the best in Pono.

Here, tough situations end well through love, creativity, and working closely together. When we learn how to work through the toughest situations together, STRESS becomes our SUPERPOWER.

 

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Sherry A. Burton speaking about “Discovery -The Orphan Train Saga”

While most use their summer breaks for pleasure, third grade teacher Cindy Moore is using her summer vacation to tie up some loose ends concerning her grandmother’s estate. When Cindy enters the storage unit that holds her grandmother’s belongings, she is merely looking for items she can sell to recoup some of the rental fees she’s spent paying for the unit. Instead, what she finds are secrets her grandmother has taken to the grave with her. The more Cindy uncovers, the more she wants to know. Why was her grandmother abandoned by her own mother? Why hadn’t she told Cindy she’d lived in an orphanage? And how come her grandmother never mentioned she’d made history as one of the children who rode the Orphan Trains? Join Cindy as she uncovers her grandmother’s hidden past and discovers the life that stole her grandmother’s love.

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Glenn Cooper speaking about “The Lost Pope”

Cal Donovan, a theology professor at Harvard, receives an urgent message from a former graduate student, Samia Tedros. Now a museum conservator in Cairo, Samia has discovered a miraculous fragment of papyrus with three unknown lines from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene so explosive that a wealthy man is willing to kill to ensure no one ever sees it. At the Vatican, another drama is developing. The new Pope has defied centuries of tradition and appointed a nun, Sister Elisabetta Celestino, as his secretary of state. Powerful insiders are outraged that a woman now sits as the second most influential person at the Vatican, and they plot to destroy her. When Samia shows up at Cal’s doorstep in the dead of night, he is drawn into a deadly competition to possess a papyrus with the power to rescue Sister Elisabetta and change the course of Christianity.

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Ken Parejko speaking about “Kasia's Story”

"Kasia's Story" retells the final twenty years of the life of an elderly widow, Katarzyna Weiglowa, tried for heresy in Reformation Poland in the early sixteenth century. After the death of her husband, Kasia continues searching to answer the question they had begun exploring together: whether the God they find in their hearts is the same God they encounter in their church. The book is written in a parallel narrative featuring the complex life and political intrigues of Poland's Queen, Bona Sforza, who as a child knew Leonardo da Vinci. The times are turbulent and complex. The Church's response to the Reformation and the presence of Jews in Poland carries them far from Christ's call for compassion. All of Europe is now aflame with brilliant new ideas, and equally with the fires of repression: times not that different from ours. Deeply researched in Poland and through the literature, "Kasia's Story" is, in the mold of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, a deep dive into times which though long past, cast an instructive shadow into ours.

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Kathy J Forti speaking about “STACKS Library of Truth”

STACKS Library of Truth is a fast-paced, thought-provocative story that is tailored for fans of the X-Files who want to know more about the alien forces that exist beyond our conceptions. The story revolves around a library employee at the Library of Congress who accidentally unearths a dark agenda by those in power. Uncovered in the Library of Truth are the goods on all world leaders, politicians, businessmen, and all those in global power positions. Everything they ever did is on record – even the things done in private that no one witnesses. This unique library also contains a file on every person – alive and dead – that ever walked the face of the Earth. When library employee, Zach Eldridge, attempts to expose the crimes of a ancient society in control of the Library of Truth, it leads to mayhem and murder within the power denizens of the Nation’s Capitol. Zach becomes the “Deep Throat” to a Washington, D.C. television reporter, which quickly puts them both in grave danger. The more Zach learns about the Library of Truth, the deeper the rabbit hole gets. STACKS Library of Truth is an enthralling, suspenseful, adventurous story where the fate of humanity rests on whether it’s too late to learn the truth – and fight back to save it. STACKS Awakening Truth is the sequel (November, 2022) that continues the story of how mankind is in jeopardy and what will have to be done to save it. The final episode in the trilogy, STACKS Truth Will Set you Free (April, 2023,) leads the reader even deeper down the rabbit hole with twists and turns and the most unique ending imaginable.

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Gary D Wilson speaking about “The Narrow Window”

The story opens with the early morning rape of a young American woman, who, along with her husband, has come as a volunteer teacher to a small country in southern Africa. The rapist is captured by the husband and is subsequently arrested and held for trial. Because the Ministry of Justice sees the incident as sensitive, oversight of the case is assigned to an American expatriate lawyer employed there. The ensuing story follows not only the volunteers' lives as they cope with the aftermath of the attack and the Ministry of Justice's involvement in the matter, but also a growing unease on the part of characters concerning who they are and where they belong. Questions of culture and identity impact the action and outcome of the story.

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Dennis Galloway speaking about “Dream Traveler's Tale Book II: The Pen, Knights Templar Treasure”

Katherine MacDonald is on her own. Divorced with two small children while Edinburgh is being bombed during World War II, she is desperate to survive. Her long hours working at a laundry barely pay her bills. Her only solace is writing, but she could never imagine how a little pen found in an antiques store would change her life. Astonished, Katherine watches as the pen drags her hand across pages, scrawling out words from the past—the words of the medieval knight Francois Jacques LaMar. Soon, Katherine finds herself time-traveling into the past to witness Francois’ life as he rises from being a miserable orphan to a Grand Marshal of the Knights Templar, honored by all. And in his writing, he reveals a secret treasure that he hid away that still waits to be found. Amid the chaos of World War II, Katherine begins to search Francois’ writings for clues to the Knights Templar’s hidden treasure. Overcoming treachery and setbacks and finding trustworthy companions, she travels to the black, dangerous Cuillins Mountains on the Isle of Skye, little realizing the Nazis also seek the treasure.

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Larry Lockridge speaking about “The Cardiff Giant”

The Cardiff Giant, set in Cooperstown, New York, has up its novelistic sleeve Puck's profound declaration, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Jess Freeman, investigative reporter, arrives on the scene to look into the weird disappearance from the Farmers' Museum of a huge human figure. He had been unearthed in the late nineteenth century near Cardiff, New York. Jess confronts locals and outsiders who all have a theory, including that the giant has been reanimated and is lurching throughout the community. They are enmeshed in self-punishing belief systems such as alien abduction, astrology, kabbalistic numerology, New Age rebirthing, and religious dogmas reduced to literal absurdities. The fast-paced action centers around episodes where they pay a sorry price for their beliefs. But skeptics don't fare much better, susceptible as they are to mental disorders that show the faculty of reason is fragile indeed. These characters group and regroup, with romance always on their minds, and finally come to recognitions at once surprising and moving.

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Kass Ghayouri speaking about “An Era of Error”

Kass Ghayouri's An Era of Error sheds light on an Indian girl growing up in a period of racial segregation enforced through the legislation of the Apartheid government, in South Africa during the period of 1960 to 2000. During the time of the Apartheid regime, Kay found it a liability being an Indian. The Immorality Act was a strict code of conduct, which prevented interracial affairs and marriages. It is a story of jaw-dropping dehumanization, torture and verbal intimidation, conducted in total violation of the Apartheid laws. The major characters suffered gross violation of civil rights and human rights, unleashed by the Apartheid era. Amidst the brutality, emerges the most beautiful love story that transports the major characters into a new dimension.