Death of a Cigarette: A Story of Survival, Memory and Legacy. by Timothy Webber

Death of a Cigarette opens in the present day, at a Midwestern museum where an artifact rests behind glass: a single unlit Lucky Strike cigarette. From there, Chance, the cigarette himself, begins to speak.

He takes us back to the tobacco fields, tended by sisters Eva Mae and Ella Mae, where the journey truly begins. From curing barns to the factory floor, Chance and his siblings are shaped, wrapped by Henri the dignified French paper, and packed for war. By Chapter 4, their voices awaken fully.

The pack crosses the Atlantic into the hands of Philip Martin, a Missouri farm boy preparing for D-Day. On the Channel, tracer arcs stitch the sky. At Omaha Beach, the ramp drops, Sally burns bright, Winston steadies Philip with an unlit benediction, and Chance, riding in Philip’s chest pocket, becomes a quiet talisman of survival.

Inches and breaths define the beach crossing. Afterward, the war opens into hedgerows and aftermath: a harmonica at dusk, a shared apple, unsent letters. When the fighting ends, silence follows Philip home to Missouri, lingering in a drawer only carefully opened.

In 1961, during the Stars and Stripes centennial in Bloomfield, he gives his uniform, and Chance, to the museum, where a modest placard tells almost nothing of their story.

Decades later, in the Epilogue, Philip’s grandson Art encounters the display once more in the present day. Recognition bridges private grief and public memory, completing the circle that began in the Prologue. Chance remains unlit, but not unspent.

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The Quarry Bank Runaways by G J Griffiths

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“Child apprentices in very many cotton mills continued to be treated like slaves well after the Slave Trade Acts of the 19th century.” “Pauper child apprentices from workhouses were not even paid after working 12 hour days and for 5 or 6 days a week, mill owners counted the profit!” In the early 19th century, when it was the policy of many of the poorhouses and workhouses to deter paupers from applying by making the conditions inside harsh and unpleasant, two boys set out on a journey to Hackney Workhouse in London. Their starting point was in the pleasant Cheshire countryside, where they were apprenticed to the cotton mill built by Samuel Greg in 1784. Children as young as 9 would be employed there, as scavengers, piecers, mule doffers or can tenters. These jobs could be just as unpleasant and difficult for a poor child as those we may have heard of, such as chimney sweeps and match girls. Quarry Bank Mill was some 200 miles north of London and the boys had to sneak out unnoticed and then attempt to walk all the way. It was likely that these enterprising travellers took advantage of the drovers’ roads and the newly developed “motorways” of the times – the canals. Perhaps they were lucky enough some days to hitch a lift; their general direction of travel taking them to Beartown, the Potteries, Dunstable Downs and eventually to London. Whatever challenges they encountered along the way archive evidence shows that they made it. Runaway apprentices had become a problem for society during the years of the Industrial Revolution – so what had prompted Thomas and Joseph to do such a hazardous thing? What happened to them on their long journey? Did they receive any help? Or were they chased relentlessly wherever they ran, since what they were doing was illegal in the eyes of the authorities? This is the story of their adventure and it concludes with the events in the Middlesex courthouse, known then as the Old Sessions.

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A Woman’s Fight by Sofia Diana Gabel

In this blending of historical fact and fiction, 19th century French feminist writer and speaker Maria Deraismes struggles against misogynistic men and the French government during the turbulent 1870s in Paris. Maria involves herself with the Paris Commune in 1871 and rallies behind the new socialist government believing it will end inequality. Violence erupts when troops break through the barricades on April 2nd and begin a bloody week to overthrow the Commune.

Maria fights for equality and speaks openly for the people, but her words fall on deaf ears. With support from her Masonic friends, she pushes to be initiated into the male-only Order to prove women are no different than men and deserve to stand with them. It’s a dangerous road she walks down but she refuses to give up, clinging to the French motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

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Color of Fire by Gina Giordano

“And I thought you were my savior in my darkest hour. How very wrong I was.”
 
1794: Devastated by the violent disappearance of her husband, Charles Sharpe, Eliza struggles to save Pleasant Hall from the hands of crooked creditors and the governor’s greed. In the aftermath of the attack, her husband’s enemies have branded him a traitor and declare him dead.
But an unlikely source carries knowledge that he still lives, and he alone knows who has taken Charles. Eliza’s desperation drives her to form an alliance with the king of the underworld himself: Captain Hiram Bruin, a notorious man who is more pirate than privateer.
Eliza’s death has been ordered by Lord Dunmore, and Bruin himself tasked with the deed. But Hiram Bruin has never been a man to follow orders. He offers her passage on his ship, the Fortuyne, and his personal protection. In her hour of distress, Eliza accepts—for she has no other choice.
Bruin takes Eliza on a dangerous voyage from the island of New Providence to the wild and untamed Saba, and finally to England, where her journey started three years ago.
Eliza endures her new sinister reality, one where death creeps ever closer, and quickly learns that the only monsters at sea are men. Ensnared by the salt air and damning secrets, one thing is startlingly clear: Bruin wants to take everything she holds dear. For the roots of revenge lie deep…
Will Eliza be able to save the life of her husband before it’s too late? What price is she willing to pay for his freedom? And can she escape this unimaginable nightmare, fueled by a man of unspeakable cruelty?
 
Color of Fire is the dark, thrilling conclusion to Gina Giordano’s sweeping historical epic, the STRANGE EDEN Trilogy, and is on sale this weekend only!

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About Featured Book: Living in Cleveland with the Ghost of Joseph Stalin by Marc Sercomb

It’s the summer of 1953. Calvin Jefferson Coolidge is thirteen years old when the ghost of Joseph Stalin appears to him in his Aunt Evelyn’s cluttered Cleveland attic and wants to dictate his memoirs to him.
“I want to tell my side of the story,” Uncle Joe tells him. “They’re giving me one year to set the record straight, so we need to get started right away.”
Calvin’s life is falling apart at the seams. He’s a misfit and loner whose only friends are famous dead people. He loves polka music and Westerns and sometimes wonders what it would be like to kiss a girl. His con man father is in Florida looking for his bipolar runaway mother. His cousin Buck is abducted and experimented on by aliens. The lady next door wants to coach him in the ways of love. His pastor thinks he’s headed straight for Hell. His English teacher thinks he’s a savant. The school psychologist wants to have him committed. His shrink thinks he’s just plain nuts. Sometimes, Calvin believes it too.
Everybody’s trying to figure out what makes Calvin tick in this quirky, fast-paced metaphysical romp through the heart and soul of 1950’s America.

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