Please join us for this year’s Local Author Day on Saturday, December 7, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM! More than 35 local authors of children’s, teen, and adult books will be sharing their work with the library community. Snacks will be provided and admission will be free!
You can learn more about all the authors participating in Local Author Day 2019 by clicking the “Read More” link below.
Authors of Books for Adults
George Rollie Adams (Website)
South of Little Rock is a cross-genre novel about race, family, and life in a small town in the South in the 1950s with present-day meaning for all Americans. Sam Tate is a widower who dotes on his two children in tiny Unionville, Arkansas. Becky Reeves is an unmarried northerner who ignores a warning from her mother and comes south to teach. Ida Belle Tate is a strong-willed woman who loves helping raise her grandchildren and dislikes blacks and Yankees. Life changes for all of them when Governor Faubus resists the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, President Eisenhower sends troops to ensure it, and an ambitious Unionville newspaper editor and others fan racial hatred.
Michael Buckner
Ject: The Philosophy of Michael J. Buckner MA is a multidisciplinary examination of human existence. In the age of social media and rapid advances in technology, what does it mean to exercise our humanity?
Gary Craig (Website)
Seven Million: A Cop, A Priest, A Soldier for the IRA and the Still-Unsolved Rochester Brink’s Heist tells of one of the nation’s largest armored car company robberies and its possible ties to the Irish Republican Army.
Jeff Crawford
Bat Tongs and Other Humorous Reflections on Pastoral Ministry is about the laughter and dancing “seasons.” Oh, how we need to find the humor in life. It is my hope that these reflections will help the reader discover or rediscover this dynamic! May you laugh and be thankful to our Gracious God as you are reminded of the imperfections that permeate us all.
Sally Crosiar (Website)
Come Back is a novel that tells the story of a reluctant homecoming. Vi Masters fled her hometown years ago and hoped never to return. But when her aunt shows signs of failing, she can’t say no. Unresolved feelings, sticky relationships, and long-held secrets come to the surface in this tale narrated by four principle characters.
Love Builders: Powerful Validation Tools to Enhance Any Relationship offers proven strategies to help parents, lovers, daughters, sons, and co-workers develop positive and affirming relationships. Co-written with Dr. Sidney B. Simon, Love Builders presents classic tools from Dr. Simon’s long career in Values Clarification and Realization along with stories of practical application of these tools as told by Crosiar.
Jeanne Crane (Website)
Abby and Mark want the freedom to explore their new relationship away from the watchful eyes of family and neighbors in Amidst the Stones of Celtic Ireland. He is fascinated by lighthouses and she is drawn to ancient Celtic stone circles. They embark on a road trip around the coast of Southwest Ireland that takes them into mystical and magical experiences far beyond their planned itinerary. Messages from Abby’s past, even perhaps past lives, greet them as they visit stone circles, ancient Celtic church ruins and ponder the role of the Mother/Divine Feminine in ancient religion, local myth and history, and early Christianity.
Susan Fiandach and Connie Wake
Everyday Conversations: The Key to the Contemporary Medium – Unlocking the Myths explains the misconceptions of psychic-mediumship.
Everyday Conversations: The Student Guide to the Daily Medium – Unlocking your Sixth Sense is a self-study guide to engaging your own sixth sense, which is written in an easy to understand, step-in process.
R.R. French
The Double Initial Killer is a part courtroom drama, part coming-of-age suspense novel inspired by the real-life unsolved mystery of the double initial rapes and murders from the 1970s that happened in Rochester. In this fictional account, a plausible profile of the killer, his means, and his motives is presented. The main character, Rina Rosello, is a young Assistant District Attorney who is given the first big case of her career. It was a longshot cold case of the horrific rapes and murders of three prepubescent girls, all of whom had double initials. Rina experiences a mixture of emotions as she is reminded not only of all the commonalities that she shared with the victims, including double initials, but also of a childhood that she has tried desperately to forget. Now, nearly two decades later, there is finally a break in the cold case, a suspect is in custody, and Rina is the prosecutor assigned to the trial. It’s her first big case, and she is up against a seasoned and consistently victorious defense attorney.
Betty Gurak
Everyone experiences grief at some point in their lives, and how one person responds to it may differ from another. The Cycle of Grief is a story of how I lost my husband unexpectedly, and how his death impacted my life, my thoughts, and my feelings from that day forward.
Alison Lyke (Website)
Welcome to Zeta City, where the whole world goes to die. Here, the Node System uploads the minds of the dying so they can spend eternity in a digital Promised Land. But, this cyber heaven is causing hell on earth for the living because the System forces them to earn Points to buy data in the afterlife.
Honey is a lovable, scatterbrained barista at a trendy indie beverage shop. All in one day, her job, her family, her future, her love-life, and her literal-life are all thrown into jeopardy by the furious haunting of a ghost who calls herself Pearl. Then things go supernatural, paranormal, and everything in-between! Soon, Honey is confronted by a colorful parade of ghosts, demons, karma, gods, gypsies, and time keepers.
Ruth A. Marincic
Like Nuns to Greensburg asks if you wake up tomorrow with no memory, you will have to create one. Who are you? Your people? Your work? What grows in your garden? Are you smart, good-looking, kind, happy? Can you cook, skate, dance, and sing? Who do you love? Who loves you? What plans do you have for our world? Do you think you can change it? Imagine! Just imagine!
Katya Moore (Website)
The Siren Job is the first book in the “Stolen Hearts Crew” series and features seductive shifters, heist-flavored hijinks, a hint of the arcane, and steamy reverse-harem romance. If you like a little action with your action, this series is for you.
J.T. Murphy
August 1901: When Anarchist Terrorists massacre the workers of Archeology dig site 403B in the Adirondacks and abduct fifteen year old Gladys Gwynn, her wealthy Industrialist brother hires the Strategic Tactics and Extraordinary Management Consultation And Protection Partnership (STEAMCAPP) team to rescue her. Set in an Alternate Steampunk reality amongst the backdrop of a British-American Cold War, STEAMCAPP: The Rising of the Moon promises to be a thrilling action-packed, rollicking adventure, peppered with humor and romance and set in the wild beauty of the Adirondack forest.
Estelle O’Connell (Website)
Tears of My Heart: Poems and Stories of Bereavement is a collection of writings expressing my grief at the loss of my beloved, express the emotions experienced before, during and after the end of a blessed relationship of almost six decades.
Bryce O’Connor (Website)
The Wings of War is a dark fantasy series following the trials and conquests of Raz i’Syul Arro, an inhuman mercenary with a bone to pick with the world.
The Shattered Reigns follows the Declan Idrys, a young sellsword of rare skill, as he hunts down rising threat to the kingdoms of man and elves. Along with a sword-wielding dragon, and sorcerer with a complicated past, and a half-elf huntress with a marksman’s eye, Declan finds himself pulled into a conflict so old, it is synonymous with a time stretching back before the written histories of the world.
Margaret Osborne
We Bought the Farm is the story of the humorous (and sometimes harrowing) experiences while the author, her husband, and four children lived four years on a farm in the 70s in New York State’s Southern Tier.
CaTyra Polland (Website)
Are you a student, recent graduate, stay-at-home parent reentering the employment market? Perhaps you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, young professional or retiree. This book is for anyone interested in being professional. Learn the purpose and importance of an informational interview, the difference between business professional and business casual attire and the importance of code-switching.If you are clueless about professionalism or need a refresher, Professionalism, What’s That?! is just the book you need.
Rosalie Pullara
Someday You’ll Understand portrays memorable characters who are caught, as we all are, in the tangled web that is the human condition. Bundled in a shadowy corner of America in the Roaring 1920’s is the LaStrada family. Desperate for the love that is missing in her marriage to a tyrannical Sicilian immigrant, who beats her because she has not given him a son, Lucia commits an act that is unforgivable. One day she leaves her family. Her daughters come home from school on that day looking for Mama but instead find the end of childhood. During the ensuing months, the girls and their father carry on as best they can while their mother faces other challenges with the new man in her life. Circumstances eventually force Lucia to return home to her family. In an ironic twist, she gives birth to a son.
Aisa Purak
Bosnian Immigrants: Opportunities and Challenges in the Greater Rochester Area is a first attempt to analytically study and discuss the Bosnian community of Rochester. It is focused on the lives and experiences of a sample of 100 Bosnian families living in Rochester, most of whom have successfully adjusted to a new environment, while facing many religious, cultural, and linguistic challenges. According to the testimony of many Bosnian refugees residing in Rochester, New York, as refugees and newcomers to the city, they faced many challenges including: the language barrier, cultural differences, isolation, fear of being different and not accepted, fear of losing their ethnic and religious identity, prejudice, discrimination, and uncertainty of the future for their children.
Ginny Riedman-Dangler (Website)
Before They Were Our Mothers was conceived when Patricia A. Nugent realized, at her mother’s funeral, that she knew very little about her mother’s life before her mother was her mother. She’d never asked; her mother had never offered. Nugent deeply regretted missing the opportunity to know her mother more fully. To inspire other families to share personal histories, she compiled this anthology of real-life stories about women before they were mothers.
Diane Rivoli (Website)
License is a novel about the moments that make up life (from the ordinary everyday moments that anyone can relate to, to the catastrophic) and the emotions that course through us during those moments. It’s the temper in an argument, the excitement of a new beginning, the thrill of a kiss, the guilt in a mistake.
Push and Pull is a sequel of sorts to License as major characters become minor and minor characters become major. Jay Hendershott was tall and handsome, with a football player’s build, a quick wit, and an easy smile. He was a successful photographer for a local television station, a caring father to his teenage daughter, a thoughtful neighbor, and a helpful friend. Jay was happy. More importantly, he was a man in love. Together, in a three-bedroom ranch on a tree-lined suburban street, Jay and his daughter and the one that he loved lived as one happy family… a perfect picture, if perfection was something that truly existed. But life is too complicated for perfection.
Robert L. Shanebrook (Website)
The technology required to make photographic film has been a secret held by a few companies. Making Kodak Film explains, for the first time at this level of detail, how Kodak makes film. Photographic film is one of the most technically sophisticated chemical products that is used in everyday life. Over 200 complex chemical components are coated on to film base in up to 18 unique, precision layers which in total are half the thickness of a human hair. This insider’s view explains in simple terms how the operation works.
Judith Ellison Shenouda
Live well in nature… Froggy lives a healing life in which all warts have faded away in Living Well in Froggy’s World of Plenty: Sweet Talk to Read Aloud. Froggy and his many critter friends are fully engaged in a world of plenty where everything needed to live well is right there. It’s in the earth, in the waters, and in the air. With light and laughter, sweetness and sustenance, work and hobbies, and prayers and praises, Froggy, his friends, and we, too, can heal by living well in nature.
Live well at work… Career Success in 12 Easy Steps: A Journal serves as a friend, confidante, and guide, offering space to think, explore, doodle, draw, dream, and create a successful worklife. New friends, including Darren Dreamer, Mark Mystified, Danny Discovery, Betsy Benevolent, Rose Repertoire, Stacey Success, and others inspire those in transition from school to work or from one work experience to another to create their own success stories for living well at work.
Juanita Tischendorf
In Circle of Seven, what is it that connects Dr. Memer to the Ceps-Log women? He has been Nola’s psychiatrist since she was seven and later began seeing Nola’s daughter Joy. When Nola’s mother realizes it is time to share their secrets, she admits that she has visions too and for the first time, Dr. Memer is told the whole truth of what has been happening to Joy and Nola. As he searches for a way to help them, he learns that there is more to their relationship than doctor/patient, that somehow, he himself is a clue to solving the mystery. As the circle grows, the Ceps-Log women find they are surrounded by family, neighbors, and strangers who are there to help in their battle against good and evil.
Ken Wood
How many coincidences does it take to make something a conspiracy? Ebenezer and the Carol Conspiracy reveals the truth behind one of the most iconic Christmas stories ever shared. Dickens wanted revenge, for his family and himself. The facts are all laid out in thisjourney from America to Great Britain and Ireland from today to the time of Dickens. Is this the biggest cover up in literary history? In my opinion, it is.
Elizabeth Woodruff (Website)
In Hope and Faith, Elizabeth ran a house for people who needed a place to stay; it was an orphanage for all ages. Alexandria had been dropped off as a baby in a basket with only a note to “take good care of Alexandria” and attached was a ring, and Alexandria had lived there until she had found a family at the age of ten. Elizabeth had always wondered how Alexandria was doing; she had not heard word of her since the family had taken her away.
Authors of Books for Children
Barbara Franco Adams (Website)
The Adventures of the Course Kids: Through Faith and Grace is the story of a young girl who grudgingly agrees to volunteer at a homeless shelter. Through the patience and guidance of her mother and some unexpected teachers, Grace experiences the miracle of a changed perception, from fear to love.
Adam DeRose (Website)
On a sunny fall morning, the Moose saw a school bus scoot past him. Since he had nothing to do that day, he decided that he would go to school in The Day the Moose Went to School.
Becky Ferrigno (Website)
Blazing A Trail: The Story of Minna Anthony Common is a narrative non-fiction book that recognizes a north country woman whose vast contributions to nature education and botany have been virtually unexplored. Minna Anthony Common’s life is a testament to what can be achieved with determination, focus and a strong sense of self. A resident of northern New York in the early 1900s, she overcame adversity to become a respected botanist, a New York Times columnist, a nature education advocate and a blazer of a nature trail. Her work as a botanist and an author influenced the course of nature education in the North Country public schools and the human footprint in Thousand Island Park.
Joanne Russo Insull (Website)
Dugan: The Dog Who Said, “Mom” is about a little dog who lives in a shelter, waiting for someone to adopt him. He is cute and friendly but he barks—a lot, and that has kept people from taking him home. Finally, Dugan’s special day comes, and a woman is willing to take a chance on him. She adopts him and gives him a loving home. His new mom also helps him find the special talent he has always wished for.
With silliness and humor, this picture book for children, The Shoe on the Side of the Road and Other Missing Things, explores the mystery of abandoned shoes, lost socks in the dryer, and missing mittens in the snow.
Andrew Perry (Website)
Gargle the Goose is a young Canada Goose who, like all of his fellow fledglings, dreams of being an important and respected leader in his “geesing” community. As a low-ranking member of his family’s gaggle, Gargle rashly attempts to hijack his family’s formation in their annual Great Migration to the south, with calamitous consequences.
Kirsten Wheelock (Website)
Ruby Panda’s Christmas Surprise is the newest book in the ZooPals series and Winter has come to the zoo. Many of the animals have gone to visit zoos in warmer climates or are sleeping. But Rudy Panda is getting ready for a special surprise. Can you guess what it is? Join the ZooPals to learn about animals and how zoos are helping them.
Authors of Books for Teens
Judi Flanders
Self-esteem is an integral part of personal happiness, fulfilling relationships, and achievement in You Are Powerful. Teenagers are under a lot of pressure, and it’s easy for their peers, parents, teachers, and siblings to wear down a teen self-confidence and self-esteem with idealistic expectations, unkind comments, and conflicting messages. Teenagers can benefit from a healthy dose of self-love every day, using the following affirmations to help them cope with situations and behaviors of others that could cause a drop in the teen’s self-esteem and possibly lead to self-defeating behaviors. The key is to stick with saying an affirmation until it feels natural and normal to think this way.
J.A. Goodman
Homicide detectives Emma Mason, and her partner Mitch Delaney, work to protect the city of Rochester from a psychopathic killer in Tangled Justice. They match wits with a man educated in Criminal Justice who begins his killing spree after the brutal murder of his parents. Learn about the latest techniques and behind the scenes police work involved when solving what looked like the “perfect crime”. Woven into this narrative, is a tale of romance between Emma and a wealthy and mysterious suitor, named Peter. They are two very different people, whose lives collide in dangerous and unexpected ways.
Homicide Detective Emma Mason and her partner, Mitch Delaney, investigate the murder of a police officer’s mistress in Domestic Justice. Tag along as they are thrust into the brutal world of domestic abuse. Watch the violence spill over and put Emma’s career, as well as her life, in jeopardy. Explore the world of police procedures, as the detectives interact with the crime unit, the medical examiner’s office, ballistics unit and the patrol officers who risk their lives every day, to serve and protect.
K.L. Gore (Website)
It’s the 1960s in Save Me A Song, and in this small Baptist town where Gospel is the only acceptable music and gossip leaks from mouths like water from rusted pipes, no family wants to be the town’s Big Disgrace. When Tabitha’s older brother arrives home from college, he brings a friend to stay with them. Not only is Brandy one more mouth to feed, she’s a little wild, much too outspoken, and will soon give birth to a “bastard baby,” an unforgivable sin.
M.P. Shelford
In See the Heart, Lilian Islidora is just a servant girl, awarded the prestigious opportunity to work for the Lord of Weldunmeadow. Through her mundane duties to the heir of the Duin Kingdom, she finds herself longing to become something more. After a series of events begin unraveling, Lilian becomes aware that she may be the key to an ancient prophecy and has now developed the gift of wielding magic. As the shocking truth of her capabilities are revealed, Lilian decides to flee, avoiding the persecution of those who would renounce her abilities and brand her a heretic. Finding an ally in an old wizard, Lilian discovers a mystical sword named Etcherfrost, which possesses incredible strength and magical properties. As the quest to find her true identity unfolds, Lilian will fight for her life overcoming a horde of hostile mercenaries, vanquishing possessed demons, and facing the terrifying sorceress known as Sybbyl of the Shadowspring.
Justin Steinman (Website)
In Land of Giants, no Journey is made without sacrifice. Circumstances have led a portion of humanity to retreat to the northern reaches of the world. If the north’s brutal cold wasn’t cruel enough, it is also home to man-eating trolls and other gargantuan beasts that wish nothing more than to consume every living human hidden in the north’s dense fog.
Published on November 29, 2019.
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