Books published by publisher City Owl Press

On a chilly Monday morning in 1935, a young maid opened the garage door of a Southern California seaside villa onto a grim scene. Her employer, a popular motion picture comedienne, lay dead in the front seat of her expensive automobile. Within hours, the news of Thelma Todd’s death was making headlines throughout the nation. Was it murder, suicide, or accident?Cast against the background of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the film industry and the growing metropolis, her death baffled both the public and the investigating authorities. After numerous attempts to solve the mystery over the last eighty years, a powerful mythology remains, obscuring the facts of the case as well as the character of Thelma herself.For the first time, however, the mystery of Thelma Todd’s death will unfold as it originally did in 1935. Not only does Testimony of a Death narrate the events of that December but it also explores the forces and personalities central to the tragedy.The book examines the various contexts of Todd’s death, including the motion picture business in its Golden Age and the city of Los Angeles hovering on the verge of its greatness. It looks beyond the legends and distortions to the darker reality that lies beneath the myths.

How do we equip the next generation with money management skills that they can carry forth into their adult lives?One of the most important lessons that you can teach your kids is how to handle their money. Unfortunately, for most parents, giving their kids a sound financial education is an afterthought at best.Frustrated by the lack of resources that apply the concept of finance to real life situations for his own children to learn from, author Walter Andal was inspired to create an informative and entertaining book to help children get on the right path to making smart personal financial decisions.In Finance 101 for Kids, children and parents will explore:How money startedHow to earn and make moneySaving and investingWhat credit is and the dangers of mishandling creditWhat the stock market isEconomic forces that can affect personal financeWhat currencies and foreign exchanges areThe importance of giving back to the communityAnd much, much more!

A witchy good girl hiding secrets from her family…Cami yearns for a regular, ho hum, average life. Or at least as normal as she can get in a family of witches. But she can’t tell her sisters about her violent ex. Or that she broke the first rule of magic to “harm none.” Yet, when her youngest sister asks for help unraveling the death of a 1930’s star abused by loved ones, Cami can’t refuse.A reformed bad boy who doesn’t know his family’s hidden secrets…Sam lives for his restaurant and the intrigue of digging into Hollywood history. He avoids the entanglements of relationships since even his own parents didn’t want him. But when the enchanting Cami needs his help to crack an unsolved mystery, he can’t resist. The closer they come to finding the killer, the more they crave each other. But someone is determined to stop them.Can they solve the mystery before history repeats itself?

Authors note:This is a Revised Version of the original book. It has been revised to reflect a 1st person point of view for each chapter's main character. Take note of which character leads the chapter title. This will help make the flow of thoughts smooth. This is not a book on religion or religious ideology, however, two of the main characters are Christian. They pray often and acknowledge God's influence upon the events taking place. If you find praying, acknowledging God, or seeing Jesus' name used in a positive context offensive, then I suggest you do not read this book. These are strong characters, who I think many can relate to. I hope you enjoy the book.The DayThe day was like any other day—until it became “The Day.” At 4:05 p.m. the United States was attacked with an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon. A 20 mega-ton nuclear warhead was detonated high in the atmosphere above Kansas, blanketing most of the contiguous United States and parts of Canada and Mexico with an electro-magnetic pulse that damaged nearly all microprocessors and electronic controls beyond repair. Nearly every system that depends on computers and electronics has ceased to work. The electrical grid goes down. The water system goes down. The sewer system goes down. The phone system goes down. The cellular system goes down. Cars stop. Tractors stop. Radio and TV stations go dark. The internet is no more. No more ambulance services. No more emergency services. No more government services. No more 911. In the twinkle of an eye America is sent back deep into the 19th century. Jill Barnes, a single mom, finds herself stranded on the side of Interstate 459 near Birmingham, Alabama. Jack Chance, a bank vice-president, is stranded on Interstate 85 near Montgomery, Alabama. John Carter, a contractor, finds himself stranded near Leeds, Alabama. Each must travel home to Clarke County in rural southwest Alabama. Follow them as they each make their decisions and journey home while the fabric of American society is torn asunder and criminals run amok. The story is exciting and enlightening, compelling and fast moving, infuriating and redemptive, heart-rending and heart-warming. Keep some tissue close to hand, just in case . . . .

When Freedom Has a Price, Who Will Stand Unafraid?The Metrics government has claimed success in relocating millions of Unregistered citizens out west. But the group who escaped their insidious plan knows the truth—the government had their fellow outsiders murdered.As winter approaches the hidden monastery in the hills, Bristol, Samara, Denver, and Jude realize that the responsibilities of keeping their community safe and plotting their next escape has fallen upon them.But even when they reach the allusive outside, the political turmoil in their new country makes them question if life there is any better than under the Metrics.As trust fractures between the four friends and each tries to find a way to function in this strange new world, will they be able to continue working together to find the future they thought they wanted?“Lynch’s exceptional near-future totalitarian nightmare of obedience and forced sterilization, all major individual decisions are removed. Four central characters in an unnamed city resent their repressive lives...Their lives intertwine in Lynch’s scant but complex book, which packs in scathing commentaries on police brutality, crime prevention, population control, classism, and state-sponsored murder.” - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY ★★★★★AUTHOR INTERVIEWQ: Why do you write?A: Writing is a compulsive behavior of mine. I started filling journals with observations, stories poems, lists, and quotes throughout my childhood and just never stopped. I've had a blog ever since my family got a computer. I'd always wanted to write novels, but up until recently, I lacked the discipline. Now that I've found a process that works for me, I write novels because it's what lights me up; it fulfills me.Q: What do you write?A: Right now, I write fiction with speculative elements. Real life can also be bizarre and thrilling, but I really enjoy playing with science and technology, magic, and time travel. Below is the reading order for my current series.CHILDREN OF THE UPRISINGUnregisteredUnafraidUndoneQ: Why should readers pick up your books?A: Readers are on my mind the entire time I'm writing. I try to be thoughtful enough to craft the experience that a reader will have when they enter the world of my novel. I'm always proud to say that I write commercial fiction, because it means my stories are created with the reader in mind. Be sure to scroll up and hit that BUY NOW button to journey into a world of science fiction, adventure, and the unregistered!

The Fall of a Great American City is the story of what is happening today in New York City and in many other cities across America. It is about how the crisis of affluence is now driving out everything we love most about cities: small shops, decent restaurants, public space, street life, affordable apartments, responsive government, beauty, idiosyncrasy, each other. This is the story of how we came to lose so much—how the places we love most were turned over to land bankers, billionaires, the worst people in the world, and criminal landlords—and how we can - and must - begin to take them back. Co-published with Harper's Magazine, where an earlier version of this essay was originally published in 2018.The landlords are killing the town. As New York City approaches the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. By unremarkable I don’t just mean periodic, slump-in-the-art-world, all-the-bands-suck, cinema-is-dead boring. I mean flatlining. No longer a significant cultural entity but a blank white screen of mere existence. I mean The-World’s-Largest-Gated-Community-with-a-few-cupcake-shops. For the first-time in our history, creative-young-people-will-no-longer want-to-come-here boring. Even, New-York-is-over boring. Or worse, New York is like everywhere else. Unremarkable. This is not some new phenomenon, but a cancer that’s been metastasizing on the city for decades now. Even worse, it’s not something that anyone wants, except the landlords, and not even all of them. What’s happening to New York now—what’s already happened to most of Manhattan, its core, and what is happening in every American city of means, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, you name it—is something that almost nobody wants, but everybody gets. As such, the current urban crisis exemplifies our wider crisis: an America where we believe that we no longer have any ability to control the systems we live under.

When Their Home is in Danger, Will The Plan be Undone?The liberation of their homeland depends on Bristol, Samara, Denver, and Jude. Each has a unique role to play, but the same mission. Yet, when the first phase of their plan is botched, the political climate of their new country turns on the little assembly of American refugees and forces them back into the shadows.Now, in a race against the clock, they must come together to save those they love back home and find their place in a new world. Will they be able to save their homes, their freedom, and their lives?Suspenseful, romantic, and awash in the spirit of social justice, the conclusion to the Children of the Uprising series has arrived.“Lynch’s exceptional near-future totalitarian nightmare of obedience and forced sterilization, all major individual decisions are removed. Four central characters in an unnamed city resent their repressive lives...Their lives intertwine in Lynch’s scant but complex book, which packs in scathing commentaries on police brutality, crime prevention, population control, classism, and state-sponsored murder.” - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY ★★★★★AUTHOR INTERVIEWQ: Why do you write?A: Writing is a compulsive behavior of mine. I started filling journals with observations, stories poems, lists, and quotes throughout my childhood and just never stopped. I've had a blog ever since my family got a computer. I'd always wanted to write novels, but up until recently, I lacked the discipline. Now that I've found a process that works for me, I write novels because it's what lights me up; it fulfills me.Q: What do you write?A: Right now, I write fiction with speculative elements. Real life can also be bizarre and thrilling, but I really enjoy playing with science and technology, magic, and time travel. Below is the reading order for my current series.CHILDREN OF THE UPRISINGUnregistered (book 1)Unafraid (book 2)Undone (book 3)Q: Why should readers pick up your books?A: Readers are on my mind the entire time I'm writing. I try to be thoughtful enough to craft the experience that a reader will have when they enter the world of my novel. I'm always proud to say that I write commercial fiction, because it means my stories are created with the reader in mind. Be sure to scroll up and hit that BUY NOW button to journey into a world of science fiction, adventure, and the unregistered!

A new heart, a new life, a new love...and a mystery she can't explain. Can she unite her divided heart?Mishca Richardson’s life is at an all-time high after her heart transplant. With new boyfriend, Ryder, she has the perfect summer romance. Even the nightmares plaguing her sleep since her operation can’t dull her new dream world.Yet, life starts to unravel when Mishca develops superhuman abilities. She does her best to hide them so as not to end up a laboratory experiment, but she can’t ignore the strange instant attraction she experiences when she meets her university professor, Colin Read.Torn between love and obsession, Mishca must unite her divided heart and decide between the two men. But when the truth about her weird powers comes to light, she’ll have a lot more to worry about than romance."Authors like Sharon M. Johnston keep the genre from getting stale by taking a creative bent and exploring overlapping elements." - LIBRARY JOURNAL AUTHOR INTERVIEWQ: Tell us about your writing style.A: My writing is inspired by the “What if” scenario. What if there were people who delivered Karma? This is a novel in progress expanding on a short story I wrote that was runner up in the Australian Literary Review’s YA short story competition. What if my dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was at high school? A story I’m currently writing. What if males went extinct? A story I’m currently querying. What if Puck was in love with Titania? A short story Shakespeare retelling I wrote for an anthology coming out in June.I love daydreaming and letting my mind take me to these weird and wonderful places and when the idea sticks, I write it. Q: What do you write?A: I write a lot of weird stuff that would fall under the Speculative Fiction umbrella and often mash two genres together. Science Fiction plays a strong role in my stories, probably because I like making stuff up and creating new things. I do also write contemporaries, but they usually come from something very difficult I have faced in my life.OPEN HEARTDIVIDED (book 1)SHATTERED (book 2)Q: Why should readers pick up your books?A: Divided is a story that proves great Young Adult or New Adult stories don’t have to be straight contemporary. Mischa’s story takes you on a journey of mystery and intrigue, with a twist at the end that you just won’t see coming. It’s perfect for readers who want to love Sci Fi with more Fi than Sci, especially when it has a healthy dose of romance. And Divided has one of the best book boyfriends ever with Ryder.Be sure to scroll up and hit that BUY NOW button to enter a world of intrigue, mystery, forbidden love, and of course, a divided heart.

The Addition the Fun Way Book for Kids uses cartoons and stories to help kids memorize the basic addition facts. Each of the numbers become a character, ie. the five drives, the four is a door, etc. Children learn to associate the story with the number characters which lead to the answer. Memorization is fun and easy and has been proven effective, especially for children with learning differences and who have difficulty retaining the answers to the math facts. The book follows the same format as the widely popular Times Tables The Fun Way Book for Kids, published since 1992 by City Creek Press. To see more products, like subtraction cards visit City Creek Dot Com.

From acclaimed science fiction author, Megan Lynch, comes the Children of the Uprising Collection. The set contains books 1 - 3 of the series, including Unregistered, Unafraid, and Undone. Join Bristol and his friends at they take on the Metrics government in the world of the unregistered!*******UNREGISTERED (Book 1)Living the ideal life is a human right…unless you’re unregistered.Under the watchful eye of the Metrics, will Bristol and his friends be able to escape the government's clutches, and survive long enough to discover an unknown world.*******UNAFRAID (Book 2)When freedom has a price, who will stand unafraid?The Metrics government has claimed success in relocating millions of Unregistered citizens out west. But the group who escaped their insidious plan knows the truth—the government had their fellow outsiders murdered.*******UNDONE (Book 3)When their home is in danger, will the plan be undone?In a race against the clock, the allies must come together to save those they love back home and find their place in a new world. Will they be able to save their homes, their freedom, and their lives?*******If you like Allie Condie, Dan Wells, Caragh M. O’Brien, Kyla Stone, and J.B. Simmons you’ll love this gripping dystopian ride into a sci-fi world!“Exceptional near-future totalitarian nightmare of obedience and forced sterilization. Lynch’s complex book packs in scathing commentaries on police brutality, crime prevention, population control, classism, and state-sponsored murder.” - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY ★★★★★*******What reviewers are saying:★★★★★ “One of the more innovative and gratifying novels to enter the dystopian genre.”★★★★★ “A science fiction story with a lot of heart. I warmed up quickly to all four of the core characters within this grim dystopian world.”★★★★★ “Omg’sh! Read this in one day!! Megan Lynch, you rock!!”★★★★★ “An unforgettable world and cast of characters.”★★★★★ “Engaging, with deep, thought-provoking ideas of government.”★★★★★ “A fascinating read with potentially serious social implications and a couple of major twists that keeps readers guessing.”

Meet Vanessa. Inspector. Steampunker. Robot Wrangler. Join Vanessa to solve the case in this giant robot steampunk mystery. A third Victoria has ascended the throne of a steam-driven country where enormous clockwork giants walk the streets and airships carry news of the Ottoman threat in the East.In the wake of a calamity that engulfed all of Europe, Inspector Vanessa Hargreaves of Scotland Yard is given the dubious task of policing steamcraft crime. Along with flamboyant detective Arturo C. Adler, she stumbles upon a conspiracy to use a horrific plague in an effort to prevent war.But even as dastardly forces converge upon her, our high-heeled detective struggles with her devotion to Queen and Country, and the shadows under the Union Flag grow ever deeper.Can she put a stop to this new disaster before her country is devoured by a Spectre of War? “Law fills the pages with exciting gear action and fashion.” - Publisher's Weekly ★★★★★AUTHOR INTERVIEWQ: Tell us about you and your workA: Hi! This is usually a hard question for me. Am I a child of two worlds? Yes. Do I call both New York and Hong Kong home? Yes, and that has pushed me into writing anachronistic work like steampunk. Am I a food writer, a trained chef, and a motorbike enthusiast? All yes.But they say the acorn is pulled into being by the oak tree it is going to be, and I was always going to be a novelist first and foremost. I grew up reading Douglas Adams and Madeline L'engle and Roald Dahl, and they were my friends when I moved around too much to have any. My wife and I basically live in a library.Q: What books do you write?A: I'm working on a ray gun series at the moment where I crash noir, Gothic, and western against a scifi backdrop. I adore fantasy. Ultimately, I want to push out of genre completely and go into lit fiction, but that judgement is up to the reader to make. Steampunk will always have a sweet spot with me. THE LANDS BEYOND FUTURE THAT NEVER WASSPECTRE OF WARQ: Why should readers pick up your books?A: My wife and few fans say this better than I do. They tell me I don't write weak female characters, and that I offer a voice to the voiceless. They say the writing is like a fine merlot and that the balance of action to hilarity is refreshing. Personally, I think the reason to pick up my books is the same reason you would give for following a stranger into a bar. You might not like it, but at least you will never regret it.Be sure to scroll up and hit that BUY NOW button to jump into a world of adventure, steampunk, and of course, robots!

Mishca needs to save her sisters, but only Ryder can save her. The truth about Mishca’s past shattered her heart. She deals with the pain by focusing on a new mission: saving her newfound family from their creator. With her sisters scheduled for termination, Mishca and her friends set out on a journey up the North Queensland Coast to save them before someone else dies. Ryder understands the need driving Mischa. It’s in her DNA. But he’s not giving up on the chance they can still be together. She’s the only one to have seen him levitate. The only one to watch the sparks dance across his skin. The only one he trusts enough to know what is in his heart. And now, he might be the only one who can stop Mishca from losing her humanity. Driven apart by secrets, will they come together in time? "Authors like Sharon M. Johnston keep the genre from getting stale by taking a creative bent and exploring overlapping elements." - LIBRARY JOURNAL AUTHOR INTERVIEWQ: Tell us about your writing style.A: My writing is inspired by the “What if” scenario. What if there were people who delivered Karma? This is a novel in progress expanding on a short story I wrote that was runner up in the Australian Literary Review’s YA short story competition. What if my dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was at high school? A story I’m currently writing. What if males went extinct? A story I’m currently querying. What if Puck was in love with Titania? A short story Shakespeare retelling I wrote for an anthology coming out in June.I love daydreaming and letting my mind take me to these weird and wonderful places and when the idea sticks, I write it. Q: What do you write?A: I write a lot of weird stuff that would fall under the Speculative Fiction umbrella and often mash two genres together. Science Fiction plays a strong role in my stories, probably because I like making stuff up and creating new things. I do also write contemporaries, but they usually come from something very difficult I have faced in my life.OPEN HEARTDIVIDED (book 1)SHATTERED (book 2)Q: Why should readers pick up your books?A: Divided is a story that proves great Young Adult or New Adult stories don’t have to be straight contemporary. Mischa’s story takes you on a journey of mystery and intrigue, with a twist at the end that you just won’t see coming. It’s perfect for readers who want to love Sci Fi with more Fi than Sci, especially when it has a healthy dose of romance. And Divided has one of the best book boyfriends ever with Ryder.Be sure to scroll up and hit that BUY NOW button to enter a world of intrigue, mystery, danger, and of course, romance.