Books published by Brown Posey Press

In his fiction debut, Josh Penzone examines the emotional cages suburbanites use to entrap themselves. Over the course of the year, follow the residents of Vintage Woods Court as they inadvertently influence one another to realize how sometimes acceptance of self is the only change we are capable of.An aging woman off her meds abuses the privilege of being entrusted with her neighbor's key. A war veteran confronts the man who influenced him to enlist. A devoted husband hires a male escort to answer the question he's been afraid to ask himself. The HOA President seeks retribution after her school board campaign signs go missing. A teenage girl strips for strangers via webcam wishing to feel something, even humiliation. A couple, emotionally broken after the death of their baby, hopes the Vintage Woods cul-de-sac is their answer to a new start.In these eleven linked stories, Penzone explores the self-imposed tragic quest to feel something beyond life’s dullness. Sometimes darkly funny, other times poignantly heart wrenching, suburbia’s setting showcases a place where people sport outward smiles to mask inner secrets. But are they really fooling anyone? Maybe this is why a cul-de-sac is shaped like a peephole. We want to see in.

Catharine, when disciplined by her affectionate aunt Mrs Percival, retires to the bower, where she finds relief. Her good friends the Wynnes have been separated from each other by the death of their parents. On a visit from Mr and Mrs Stanley of London, Catharine and Camilla become dubious friends, and Edward appears as a dashing possible suitor. On a visit to London, Catharine is reconnected to the Wynne brothers and eventually their sisters. Mr Stanley admires and finds suitable places for the Wynne brothers, and his son returns from a journey abroad. London is now the location of Catharine and her cousins, the two Wynne brothers and the two Wynne sisters, as well as colorful friends of Camilla Stanley--resulting in various attachments between the young people, and eventual pairings, some of them quite unexpected.

Follow a reluctant wife and her excited husband through two humorously-conflicted years of RV travel. He wanted to go; she wanted to stay. They both learn, grow, and change as a new level of freedom evolves.This book is light-hearted and humorous but at the same time serious. While not a How-To book, it gives lots of basic information about RVing. And while not a travelogue, it touches upon many travel destinations in the United States and Canada. On deeper levels, the book is about marital relationships, retiring and getting old, and finding a new kind of freedom through a minimalistic lifestyle.After reading this book, you'll never again look at one of those huge monstrosities driving down the road in quite the same way. The book answers questions for non-RVers and triggers chuckles of recognition from experienced RVers.

In 1882, Anna Maria Sharpe is departing from Washington’s Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station for the north-central Pennsylvania backwoods she’d fled in her teens doubtful of her identity. She encounters Benjamin James, a drifting, alcoholic longshoreman who’d been implicated in the murder of his brother during Anna Maria’s childhood. Benjamin decides to join her. Along the way, he relates the tale of the ancestors of their sordid hideaway settlement: his father, the infamous ex-slave Jedediah James; George Sharpe, a former indentured grist-miller whom Anna Maria believes was her grandfather; and Sarah Starret and Rosanna Wheler, the white women they had escaped with to the wild Sinnemahone country. Through the story, Anna Maria discovers an intimate connection to the man Benjamin had been accused of murdering, and to the murderer. Benjamin’s account of the life of Jedediah James reveals a fatal obsession with ownership driving this freed slave toward his reckoning. Clandestine Quakers and a sympathetic prothonotary try to help James as hostilities build to a head between him and the august revolutionary war veteran Samson Starret and Thomas Tillman, a man fixated on a woman an ex-slave threatens to steal from him on the eve of his possessing her. The scenes of The Indigo Scarf take the reader from a forbidden slave marriage on a plantation in Virginia’s tidewater region to the tragic end of a whiskey and timber-pirating operation on the Susquehanna’s un-peopled and feral West Branch during the frontier decades after Pennsylvania’s last Indian purchase.

Crime, corruption, and colonialism—as well as compassion, survival, and dark humor—are woven into The Puerto Rico Trilogy, which consists of three separate character-driven novels that focus on the Caribbean island and its complex political and social relationship with the U.S.Ulysses in San Juan, the concluding novel, relates the relationship between a Jewish concentration camp survivor and a Puerto Rican female drug addict. It takes the reader on a trip into the San Juan underworld, as well to other island sites to meet crooked and upright and poignant and colorful characters.As the personal and the political interconnect, it is revealed that several of the trilogy’s characters have had their lives marked by such 20th Century historical turning points as the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust, the Cuban Revolution, and the Vietnamese War.

Crime, corruption, and colonialism—as well as compassion, survival, and dark humor—are woven into The Puerto Rico Trilogy, which consists of three separate character-driven novels that focus on the Caribbean island and its complex political and social relationship with the U.S.The Odyssey of Pablo Camino, the first book, was inspired by a real-life incident when a stateside doctor, sent to the island for research, claimed in a letter that he purposely killed eight of his patients because of his disgust with the “natives.” In the novel, the doctor’s fictional son, a well-known, but troubled Puerto Rican artist, goes on a search for the truth of his father’s possibly murderous past.

In the wake of the #metoo movement, times are changing. Victims and survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment are no longer staying quiet, but are raising their voices to stand up, speak out, and use their truth to bring these atrocities to light in the hopes of making lasting change.This book has 56 stories from women and men who were willing to come forward and donate their experiences in order to break their silence, start healing, and help others. The stories come from contributors as young as 14 years old to as old as 72.They are stories of survival. They are stories of the depths to which some people go, uncaring of how they affect others or whom they hurt. They are stories of predators and victims.These are victims who are no longer willing to bear their experiences in silence.It is time to see the writers of these stories as more than victims, but as who they really are: Survivors. Advocates. Mothers. Daughters. Sons. Friends."In a world haunted by aggression, violence, and betrayal, 'You Are Not Alone' serves as a campfire around which we can gather, united in our commitment to alter the trajectory of sexual violence and reclaim the dignity of our lives. It illuminates the resilience of the human beings who've lived through the trauma of sexual violence and inspires all of us to become more evolved and compassionate in our intimate connections." -- Dr. Paul L. Hokemeyer, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, New York, NY www.drhokemeyer.com

Alder Ferry would have been just another nondescript suburb living in the shadow of its urban parent if not for one detail: the mysterious stand of alder trees anchoring the town to its past and standing as a reminder to the wilderness that once stood in its place. In the shadows of the alders, a boy named Tommy found refuge. There, an eclectic book collection was his only companion through a tumultuous childhood, serving as his escape from the brutal realities of his life. That was until Aubrey appeared. Born of different worlds, the alders become their escape while their unlikely friendship blossoms into a love that few people ever come to understand or enjoy-proving that true friendship is a romantic pursuit in its purest form. Together they come of age in a town hostile to their friendship-a friendship that challenges the intersecting boundaries of class, gender, and sexuality. Prejudice and privilege masquerade to destroy their dreams while class, gender, and faith collide. All are tested as Tommy and Aubrey carry each other through their teen years and into adulthood. Whispers in the Alders is an impassioned experience that will test the emotions and is a story that will linger with the reader long after the last page is turned.