OUR BOOKS

Book One: The Good Time Girls Series

Ruby Calhoun has worked hard to outrun her past. Unfortunately, her past runs faster.

In 1905 Kansas, Ruby Calhoun has worked very hard to become a respectable woman. Or at least a woman who isn’t actively being chased.

The dancehall days are behind her. The gunfire, the narrow escapes, the upstairs girls at the Paradise Saloon who once formed her first fragile family — all of that belongs to another lifetime.

Until Pip Quinn bursts back into town with terrible news and an even worse plan.

An old enemy has resurfaced, and he is not inclined toward forgiveness. The safest course of action would be to leave quietly. Naturally, Ruby and Pip choose the opposite.

What follows is a wildly ill-advised journey across the Kansas plains filled with botched disguises, questionable alliances, con artists, missed trains, accidental heroics, and a growing realization that running from the past is far easier than facing it.

But beneath the blunders lies something stronger: loyalty. The women of the Paradise once kept each other alive in a world with little interest in their survival. And when danger circles again, Ruby must decide whether she will keep running — or finally claim the fierce, complicated strength that has always bound the Good Time Girls together.

The Good Time Girls is a lively, sharp, and heartfelt historical novel about friendship, second chances, and the remarkable resilience of women who make terrible decisions — and somehow survive them.

Available on paperback, large print, Kindle, and Audible.

Book Two: The Good Time Girls Series

Be careful what legends you let grow. They may demand a sequel.

Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn have survived dancehalls, danger, and a series of truly questionable life choices. Now, as silent films sweep the nation, a Hollywood producer decides their outlaw legend is exactly what audiences crave.

The offer? Play themselves in a motion picture based on their exploits.

It promises money, notoriety, and perhaps enough distraction to keep the law from looking too closely. It may even provide a tidy escape south of the border once filming wraps.

What it does not promise is sanity.

Between temperamental actors, melodramatic directors, wildly inaccurate scripts, gossip-hungry newspapers, and their own inability to follow even the simplest plan, Ruby and Pip quickly discover that becoming famous may be more dangerous than being outlaws.

When an old enemy resurfaces and Ruby’s sister is pulled into the chaos, the line between performance and reality vanishes. To keep her sister out of danger — and her past from writing the ending — Ruby must decide whether she will let the world define her legend… or rewrite it herself.

The Good Time Girls Get Famous is a warm, witty, and uproarious historical novel about friendship, reinvention, and the spectacular art of surviving your own bad ideas.

Available on paperback, large print, and Kindle.

Every heart has its thorns.

In this haunting and evocative collection, the writers of the Novelitics Writers Collective lead readers through tangled vines and shadowed corners of the human soul. Midnight in the Garden offers a fresh, unexpected exploration of the seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride—through stories that are by turns chilling, poignant, darkly humorous, and unforgettable.

From quiet betrayals and whispered confessions to explosive confrontations and eerie reckonings, each tale sinks deep beneath the surface of sin to uncover the longings, fears, and fragile hopes that shape our lives. This is not a morality tale—it’s a mirror held up to the heart.

Dare to step into the garden. You may not emerge the same.

How many stories can a single urban edifice inspire? The writers of the Novelitics Writers Collective found quite a few at the corner of 3rd & Oak.

As it turns out, 3rd & Oak is the place to find hidden compartments from which to view the neighbors, demons who create graffiti and demons who spew grief, portal-traveling witches, stolen bags of gold, lost sisters, and maybe even the man who is trying to kill you.

It’s the place to remember the love of your life, the girl who got away, the home you’ve always dreamed of, and Barry the Abominable Bozeman . . . but, for heaven’s sake, no union plumbers.

Check out the array of stories one address can inspire in this delightful short story anthology.

Available in paperback and ebook.

In this mesmerizing compilation, fourteen authors weave clever tales of imagination and discovery, loss and redemption. Though each story is vastly different than the last, they all have one thing in common: a necklace.

There’s the Saint Christopher pendant a brilliant city engineer wears that will test his faith, a cryptic ring on a chain that holds a mother’s dark secret, a sapphire necklace that bears magical power, a rose crystal medallion a young man gives away on New Year’s Eve before he vanishes without a trace. The grimness of prison life, a kidnapping gone wrong, a haunting of two sisters, a poisoning that saves a child, and more come to vivid life.

From California to New York City, London and Paris, to an elusive planet called Eleusis Well somewhere in the Milky Way, this gripping volume is crammed with unforgettable stories.

Each tale is as deftly rendered as it is skillfully told, the necklaces that connect them echoes of the humanity they share and the wider world they explore.

Available in paperback and ebook.ble in paperback and ebook.

A New York Public Library Best Reads for Teens.

NEW YORK, 1883: Gamblers and thieves, immigrants and street urchins, Do-Gooders and charity houses, impossible goals and impossible odds. The Bowery is a place where you own nothing but your dreams. And dreams are the only things that come cheap for pickpocket Mollie Flynn and prostitute Annabelle Lee. Pleasure is fleeting - and often stolen. Nights at Lefty Malone's saloon, sneaking into the Thalia Theatre. Then it's back to their airless, windowless tenement room and the ongoing struggle to keep a roof over their heads and bread in their stomachs.

The Brooklyn Bridge is nearing completion, and things are changing in New York City. The two women fantasize of starting a new life across the East River. Nothing but a flight of fancy, perhaps, until wealthy Do-Gooder Emmeline DuPre, who has opened the Cherry Street Settlement House, steps into their lives with her books, typewriters, and promises of a way to earn a respectable living. Despite Mollie and Annabelle's fascination with the woman and what she offers, is Emmeline helping or meddling?

Is it really possible to be anything other than a Bowery Girl? Mollie and Annabelle will have to decide exactly who they are, and what sort of women they want to be.

Available in paperback, ebook, audiobook.

Winner - Willa Literary Award for Best Young Adult Fiction

On the unforgiving Depression era Colorado plains, Cissy Funk is alone on a scrap of a farm with her mother and brother, struggling to keep her hopes alive in the face of her mother's coldness and her own broken heart. When her Aunt Vera arrives with warm hugs and pretty clothes, Cissy finally has a chance to find safety and love. But when a long-hidden family secret threatens to tear everything away, Cissy must find the courage to fight for what she needs. With dust and danger all around, it's up to her to prove that even in the harshest of times, love is stronger.

If you enjoyed the grit and heart of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, you'll love Cissy Funk and the long-lost family secrets of the Colorado plains.

“admirably evokes the dusty, gritty aura of Depression-era Colorado” – Publisher’s Weekly

“With subtlety and insight, Taylor introduces readers to complexities and truths about love and family” – American Library Association

“Taylor nails small-town agrarian Dust Bowl life in the ’30s.” – School Library Journal