Archives: Books
Title Page
Lessons From My Mother’s Life
Title: Lessons From My Mother's Life
Published by: Dreambook Press
Release Date: 2020
Contributors: Tam May
Genre: 1950s, Historical Fiction, Post War, Short Stories, Women's Fiction
Pages: 190
ISBN13: 9780998197982
ASIN: B084Y7GDV9
Add on GoodreadsDebuted at #1 in Amazon’s Historical Fiction Short Stories category!
Was the happy housewife of the 1950s really all that happy?
Women in post-war America should have been contented to live a Leave it to Beaver life. They had it all: generous husbands with great jobs, comfortable suburban homes with nice yards and a two-car garage, and plenty of house-cleaning and PTA meetings to fill their time.
It was the perfect recipe for happiness and fulfillment. Women’s magazines told them so. Advertisements told them so. Doctors told them so.
They were sold a bill of goods about post-war life. Some bought it. But some didn’t. This book is about those women who didn’t.
Five stories. Five women. Five journeys of self-discovery.
Purchase Lessons From My Mother’s Life today to walk in the shoes of five American women living in the 1950s, maybe women like your mother or grandmother. Maybe women like you.
This book also includes an Author’s Note and a bonus chapter from The Specter, the first book of the author’s Gilded Age family saga, the Waxwood Series.
Disclosure: Please note that I am a member of the Amazon Associates Program, which means that the Amazon link below is an affiliate link. That means that if you make a purchase using this link and proceed to make other purchases on Amazon, I will earn a commission. This in no way affects the cost of any product you buy on Amazon, and it helps me to keep giving readers quality books. I am an Amazon affiliate because I believe in Amazon's ability to offer quality and variety in its products, not because of the commission I receive from your purchase(s). The decision is yours as to whether or not you decide to buy through the link provided.
Front Cover Photo Credit:stokkete (Luciano de polo)/Depositphotos.com
She rose, slipping her hands from his and placing them in the pockets of her dress so he wouldn’t see them shaking. She looked out the window where the sea had disappeared for curvy mountains. “Isn’t it wonderful how you only have to travel on a railroad track to reach a new place, a new world, even?”
“It’s not enough,” he said in an almost brutal voice. “I’ve been on many train tracks to many new places and new worlds. It’s like the living body and the living soul. One without the other kills them both.”
She took a breath. “You mean your body can be in a different place, but if your soul is the same, you’ll always be back where you started?”
“Something like that.”
Her legs felt as fragile as matches as she left the drawing room and made her way down the aisle and into the observation car. She saw that Bea and Carla were both dozing in chairs near the center of the car. She crept past the resting heads and soft snoring people to where the observation section gathered like a cup at the edge of the car. There was one oblong little window that stared right ahead into the vast space of mountainous ranges and gray-blue skies. She watched as the train moved forward, leaving behind her dead soul.
False Fathers (Waxwood Series: Book 2)
Title: False Fathers (Waxwood Series: Book 2)
Series: Waxwood Series #2
Published by: Dreambook Press
Release Date: 2019
Contributors: Tam May
Genre: 19th Century Fiction, Coming of Age, Family Drama/Saga, Gilded Age, Historical Fiction
Pages: 312
ISBN13: 9780998197968
ASIN: B0821YZVKM
Add on GoodreadsIs a false father better than no father at all?
Jake has none of the virtues of the Gilded Age masculine ideal. Where he should be aggressive, he is contemplative. Where he should be ambitious, he is wayward. Where he should be money-driven, he is artistic.
Two years after his grandfather’s death, nineteen-year-old Jake takes up the role of family patriarch and heir to the Alderdice family businesses. But he’s not sure he’s cut out to be a businessman.
Jake plans to decide his future during his family’s summer trip to Waxwood, a small coastal town turned luxurious resort for Nob Hill’s elite. While there, he befriends a man who becomes a father figure, promising to mold him into the Teddy Roosevelt ideal, shaping him into the man he’s meant to be.
But danger and heartache are lurking in Jake’s path, and his father figure may turn out to be more hindrance than help.
Book 2 of the Waxwood Series is a touching coming-of-age story from one of America's most chaotic times by the author of the bestseller LESSONS FROM MY MOTHER’S LIFE, which debuted at #1 in the Amazon Historical Short Stories category.
Get False Fathers today to find out if Jake will become the man his grandfather wanted him to be.
~~~
THE WAXWOOD SERIES
The Specter (Waxwood Series: Book 1)
Pathfinding Women (Waxwood Series: Book 2) - coming in September 2020
Dandelion Children (Waxwood Series: Book 4)
To find out more about the Waxwood Series, go here.
Disclosure: Please note that I am a member of the Amazon Associates Program, which means that the Amazon link below is an affiliate link. That means that if you make a purchase using this link and proceed to make other purchases on Amazon, I will earn a commission. This in no way affects the cost of any product you buy on Amazon, and it helps me to keep giving readers quality books. I am an Amazon affiliate because I believe in Amazon's ability to offer quality and variety in its products, not because of the commission I receive from your purchase(s). The decision is yours as to whether or not you decide to buy through the link provided.
.
Front Cover Photo Credit: Portrait of a Young Man, Ferdinand von Wright, 1860s, portrait, oil on canvas, Finnish National Gallery: BotMultichill/Wikimedia Commons/PD old 100 expired
Also in this series:
The afternoon sun had arrived with its vengeance of rising heat. Jake took out his handkerchief and wiped at his forehead. At the same time, he felt something inside him shiver. He couldn’t help but think of what Vivian would have said, if she had heard the tale. He knew she would have found it one more reason to avoid Stevens, as the story would have struck her as another way in which Roger had been right about the way in which Stevens and his father engineered their will against the will of others.
“I suppose your father understood you.” He put the handkerchief away and made a shot through the hoop in front of him.
As Stevens set down his mallet down, Jake felt the weight of his expectant eyes. “I thought you would change your mind.”
“Change my mind?”
“About needing guidance,” said the redhead. “You needn’t be abashed. Other young men such as yourself have come to me when they needed a father too.”
“I didn’t say I needed a father.” Jake looked at the tussled grass at his feet. “I only meant I would be grateful for any ideas you have for me about my new undertakings.”
“As you wish,” said Stevens, though his eyes sparkled in the sun.
The Specter (Waxwood Series: Book 1)
Title: The Specter (Waxwood Series: Book 1)
Series: Waxwood Series #1
Published by: Dreambook Press
Release Date: 2019
Contributors: Tam May
Genre: 19th Century Fiction, Family Drama/Saga, Gilded Age, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction
Pages: 310
ISBN13: 978-0998197944
ASIN: B07RLVX7NW
Add on GoodreadsTo exorcise a specter, one must go back to the past…
In 1892 San Francisco, Nob Hill’s finest gather to mourn the death of Penelope Alderdice. When an uninvited guest shows up claiming to have known Mrs. Alderdice under another name, the Alderdices are shocked. Bertha Ross insists she knew “Grace” in the small coastal town of Waxwood in the 1850s and hints at Penelope’s adventures there, including a love affair and exile to an artist’s colony.
Vivian, Penelope’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter, never heard of Grace or Waxwood. Is it possible her grandmother had another identity beyond the generous philanthropist and celebrated socialite?
Against her family’s wishes, Vivian journeys to Waxwood to discover the secrets of her grandmother’s past.
But are some family truths better left hidden?
Follow Vivian’s journey in the first book of this family saga set in San Francisco’s Gilded Age by the author of the bestseller LESSONS FROM MY MOTHER’S LIFE, which debuted at #1 on the Amazon Historical Short Stories charts.
Get The Specter today and put yourself in the shoes of a Gilded Age belle who takes time away from her parties and flirtations to follow the ghosts of the past.
~~~
THE WAXWOOD SERIES
False Fathers (Waxwood Series: Book 2)
Pathfinding Women (Waxwood Series: Book 3)
Dandelion Children (Waxwood Series: Book 4)
Disclosure: Please note that I am a member of the Amazon Associates Program, which means that the Amazon link below is an affiliate link. That means that if you make a purchase using this link and proceed to make other purchases on Amazon, I will earn a commission. This in no way affects the cost of any product you buy on Amazon, and it helps me to keep giving readers quality books. I am an Amazon affiliate because I believe in Amazon's ability to offer quality and variety in its products, not because of the commission I receive from your purchase(s). The decision is yours as to whether or not you decide to buy through the link provided.
Front Cover Photo Credit: Portrait of Sonya Knips, Gustav Klimt, 1898, oil on canvas, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria: Aavindraa/ Wikimedia Commons/PD Old 100
Also in this series:
Larissa patted her head. “You’ve done all I asked of you thus far, Vivian. But lately, you’ve forgotten your position.”
“My position?”
“You’re the granddaughter of Malcolm Alderdice,” her mother said in a firm voice. “That means something in San Francisco.”
“I was the granddaughter of Penelope Alderdice too,” Vivian said. “Doesn’t that mean something?”
“In so far as she was Mrs. Malcolm Alderdice, dear.” Her mother sighed.
“A door has opened,” Vivian said. “Mrs. Ross opened it, whether we wanted her to or not.”
Her mother gave her a rueful look. “One need not walk through every open door, especially if a madwoman holds the key.”
“Mrs. Ross wasn’t mad,” Jake murmured. “Confused, but not mad.”
His mother gave him a look. Then, in a more congenial voice, she said to her daughter, “Not every door is the door to heaven, dear.”
“Let it be the door to hell, then,” Vivian declared.