When Concetta Pianto sang her Il dolce suono, the people on Bokeem slowed to listen. But no one ever asked why she sang so often. “Nor did they query the vibrant bruises, tracked downward from her face to her limbs.”When Concetta Pianto sang her Il dolce suono, the people on Bokeem slowed to listen. But no one ever asked why she sang so often. “Nor did they query the vibrant bruises, tracked downward from her face to her limbs.” Background Music is a woman’s story of societal denial and private suffering—though the pain is not Concetta’s alone. There are others. A cross-dressing teen, a dutiful wife, and a mutt named Red-eyed Blue suffer, too. But no one ever asks—Why?

Isabelle Lamberton loves her philandering father but loathes her long-suffering mother. Time blisters as the woman must care for the man who’d terrorized the City, killed her father, yet saved her life. “The Porter’s Muse” is a short story that tugs at the boundaries of difficult truths and a woman’s journey through these entanglements.On the scorching plains of the Zimbabwe Plateau a thrilling adventure is set in motion to prevent a catastrophic war between Boers, Zulus and British redcoats. Archaeologist Lazarus Longman is contacted by an agent of the British Empire and given an important mission; find the mythical gold mines of Great Zimbabwe before the Boers do and prevent revolution in Southern Africa.