Kara Frei is the author of Fool Me Twice

Thriller/Women's Lit

Anna Becker has it all. She lives in Montana on her family's successful multi-generational ranch, is engaged to her lifelong sweetheart, and works at a job she loves. But when life throws her a curveball filled with tragedy and uncertainty about her future, she decides to start over in New York. It's there where she meets Kevin Maxwell, a charming, good looking marketing executive who makes big promises for Anna's career. And it's with Kevin that Anna, for the first time since leaving Montana, feels open to a new romance. She finds out the hard way, however, that Kevin may not be exactly who or what he says he is, and she needs to save her career - and herself - before it's too late.

Kara Frei - The Independent Author Network

John Mendzela is the author of Best Interests: Intrigue and Payback in Papua New Guinea

Narrative non-fiction

A story for anyone who’s ever asked: what would I risk to do what’s right?

Papua New Guinea, 1980s, a fascinating and dangerous country. Idealistic, newly arrived teachers, John and Elisa Mendzela, step into a world of rich culture, eager learners—and buried secrets. When evidence of widespread sexual exploitation of students lands in their hands, they join a small group of colleagues trying to stop the abuse quietly, through official channels.

But the corrupt are protected and the whistleblowers punished. Events spiral into firings, threats of deportation, media exposés, student uprisings and armed police on campus. John and Elisa are forced into a high-stakes battle for justice that shakes a young nation still reckoning with its colonial past.

In the Best Interests is a gripping true story of courage, corruption, colonial legacy, and the cost of standing up when it’s easier to stay silent.

Illustrated with striking photos and authentic documents, the book combines the twists and turns of a crime thriller with deep insights into indigenous people grappling with the challenges of true independence.

John Mendzela - The Independent Author Network

Raffaela Marie Rizzo is the author of Thank You For The Shoes: Anniversary Edition

Creative Non-Fiction

Rich historical details throughout. While the story focuses on the life of one man, Michelangelo Rizzo, it is an everyman story of immigrants who came to America. It reads like a novel. Inspired by the author's own family history, which gives it authenticity along with its epic scope, it spans eighty years, two continents, and several U.S. states. The saga opens in 1909 as a thirteen-year-old fatherless boy leaves his hometown of Platania in the mountains of southern Italy on a solo journey to find the grave of the man whose blood runs in his veins, a man he cannot possibly remember. Through flashbacks, we come to understand the history, circumstances, and challenges faced by the boy's father and millions of others who were part of a thirty-year Italian migration to the Americas in the late 1880s and early part of the Twentieth Century. From the port of New York, to the steel mills and coal mines of Pennsylvania; then on to building the Shore Road along Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio, and finally arriving in the state where he hopes to find his father's grave and where he settles, Connecticut, This young man's journey is fraught with detours, challenges, loss and tragedy, and enriched with love, joy and a triumph of spirit. Readers will come to love this imperfect, ordinary man, with an extraordinary helping of faith, hope, commitment, and zest for living, merged with a button-busting love for his adopted country. Readers interested in ancestry, cultural identity, and early twentieth-century life will find much to relate to, especially in how the story honors the lives and choices of those who came before.

Raffaela Marie Rizzo - The Independent Author Network