Showing results by author "Gerald Everett Jones" in All Categories

A lonely widower from Los Angeles buys a tour package to East Africa on the promise of hookups and parties. What he finds instead are new reasons to live. Italian tour operator Aldo Barbieri convinces Harry to join a group of adventuresome “voluntourists.” In a resort town on the Indian Ocean, Harry doesn’t find the promised excitement with local ladies. But in the supermarket he meets Esther Mwemba, a demure widow who works as a bookkeeper. The attraction is strong and mutual, but Harry gets worried when he finds out that Esther and Aldo have a history.

In this historical essay, freelance writer Gerald Everett Jones correlates the few details known about the death of the last Greek-speaking philosopher with the religious and political revolution that overtook her. Jones explains how, centuries earlier, Egyptian priest Manetho and Greek mystic Timotheus created the cult of Sarapis at the behest of Pharaoh Ptolemy Soter.

A lapsed divinity student who is fascinated by astrophysics finds his best friend shot dead in a cornfield. It looks like suicide. Having returned to his farm roots near Lake of the Ozarks, Evan works as a skip tracer for the local car dealer. He learns his friend was involved in a dispute over farmland ownership that goes back two centuries - complicated now by plans to make an old weapons facility a tourist attraction.

Marriage, corruption, and rubber babes — Rollo Hemphill’s life just went from awkward to illegal. Rollo Hemphill thought he’d won the jackpot — married to the woman of his dreams and newly minted director of a suspiciously generous charity. But bliss turns to blunder when his assistant proves both too beautiful and too helpful, and his “philanthropic” work at the Keppelhoffer Foundation turns out to be a front for a baffling international scam involving erectile dysfunction, Big Pharma, and dirty politics. As Rollo fumbles through marital meltdowns and seductive office ...

Hank Ellis was murdered in his own home for dissing the cops in front of his neighbors. Cynical personal-injury attorney Eli Wolff rediscovers his idealism for simple justice when he sues the city for the wrongful death of an unarmed African American man at the hands of two police officers. Ellis was killed in his own home, choked to death, after angry officers stormed in without a warrant, anxious to teach him a lesson for disrespecting them in front of his neighbors. The guilty parties probably think you care more about entertainment than justice.

In 1892 Paris, Julius Stewart painted The Baptism, a Vanderbilt family scene that contains an embarrassing secret. In the present day, art historian Grace Atwood becomes obsessed with the painting and its hidden clues for reasons that have more to do with her personal ghosts. Either her doting husband is trying to make her think she's crazy, or she really is in the early stages of dementia.

Call Richmond went missing. Twenty years later he showed up on a family member's doorstep. He was homeless, broken, and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. For the next 14 years, his sister Rebecca took on the struggle to restore him as they faced the dark traumas and painful memories of their past. The Light in His Soul: Lessons from My Brother's Schizophrenia is her intimate memoir of helping Call as she learns that his extraordinary gifts are helping heal her and her family. Both Call and Rebecca bring light to the dark shadows of their past.

Christmas Karma is author Gerald Everett Jones' homage to Anne Tyler, whom he regards as his literary mother. It's about the travails of a dysfunctional family around the holidays, narrated by an angel who has a wicked sense of humor. Main character Willa Nawicki is bewildered by a series of curious karmic events that literally ring her doorbell during the frantic season, awakening years-old resentments and stimulating ever-more-intense personal confrontations.

What if the Second Coming was an illusion — and a conspiracy planned to sell it as salvation? An eccentric scientist’s bizarre warning electrifies a quiet Missouri farm town, impelling Evan to action and igniting a firestorm of devotion, dread, and suspicion. When crowds gather and miracles are claimed, Evan senses something more manipulative than divine at play. Drawn into a vortex of apocalyptic fear and religious fervor, Evan must investigate the nefarious Pastor Obadiah, whose influence grows by the day. As trusting souls migrate to the evangelist’s End Times Farm, suspicion grows...

A preacher known for surprising results faces a test only doubt can solve in this twist-filled, small-town mystery. When Ann Shackleton revives after being declared dead, whispers of divine intervention ripple through rural Missouri. But Reverend Evan Wycliff, reluctant miracle man and part-time sleuth, knows he’s no faith healer. When the town’s most controversial figure — investment banker Stuart Shackleton — is released from jail on a technicality after being charged with the murder of a priest, Evan must confront a conspiracy of bad actors once again. As Evan navigates his ...

In the heart of rural Missouri, former physicist-turned-preacher Evan Wycliff is no stranger to mystery—or pain. Still grieving the death of his fiancée and navigating the spiritual minefield of small-town faith, he’s trying to live a quiet life. But when Melissa Benton, a troubled teen mother with epilepsy, is forcibly taken from her sister’s trailer by child welfare officers—and separated from her newborn—Evan’s life of uneasy peace is shattered. He quickly learns Melissa isn’t just another runaway. Her baby may be the illegitimate son of Luke Shackleton, a wealthy ...

In 1945, Milton Reynolds introduced the ballpoint to the United States and triggered the biggest single-day shopping riot in history at Gimbels in Manhattan. The Reynolds International Pen Company made $5 million in eight weeks during the first non-wartime Christmas season. Thereafter, increasing competition from established companies such as Eversharp triggered several years of the "Pen Wars".

No job? Fresh out of school? Laid off? In the rapidly emerging gig economy, millions of workers will never have a job. But they can have a lifetime of profitable and satisfying assignments and projects. Written by an adept consultant who hasn’t had “permanent employment” since 9/11, this handy little book will help you survive - and thrive - as an independent contractor. Don’t wait for someone else to decide your future - here’s how to write your own story.

A car jockey at a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills, youthful hacker-turned-slacker Rollo Hemphill devises a screwball scheme for making his girlfriend jealous. Through a silly but magical ruse, our hero gets everything he's ever dreamed about - except the real love of a real, live girl. My Inflatable Friend is a witty, cautionary tale about the perils of pretending to be someone you're not - and the hazards of stroking every male's most private and vulnerable part - his swelling ego.

This short book has six stories and one essay. The essay "Boychik Lit" is the think piece, offering Gerald Everett Jones's thoughts on the genre which he named. "Chemistry" expands on the self-evident premise that you can't tell teenagers anything. The narrator of "Not Quite After Lisette is a forty-something high-tech executive whose wife is divorcing him. "Johnny Halo and Rock, the Tyro Shock Jock" is the first of three episodes from the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels. In this installment, he falls upward into a job as a shock-jock deejay. "In the Valley of the Happy People" is ...

When your ex-boss’s sex doll goes missing, and you’re the prime suspect, what could possibly go wrong? Rollo Hemphill’s life has never been simple, but now it’s downright surreal. Fleeing Paris after a dubious charity scandal, he’s pulled back into chaos when Hugo Farnsworth’s most prized possession — a lifelike doll who’s been mistaken for a real celebrity — vanishes from his boat in the South of France. Armed with nothing but disguises, bad codewords, and Felicia’s occasional financial lifeline, Rollo must navigate spy games, shady art collectors, and painfully ...

Mick McGraw is an aggressive Hollywood agent who reps famous singers. Moira Halimi-Joubert is a headstrong criminal defense attorney who studied opera. Brad Davenport is an arrogant billionaire hedge-fund manager who has a soft spot for dogs. Mick wants to make Moira a superstar, but she may have to dump Brad. What does the battle of the sexes look like when the combatants are equally matched—and might actually like each other? #MeThree?

Learn how to avoid misdirection on the information superhighway. Not to school hackers but to warn you, here are the most common ways someone can bend or break the truth to generate misinformation. Many of these tricks rely on leveraging emotion to cloud logic. Another technique is to confuse cause and effect, often implying that perpetrators are actually victims (and vice versa). This little book in the White-Collar Migrant Worker series is adapted from the author's Eric Hoffer Award-winning textbook, How to Lie with Charts: Fourth Edition. This text has been adopted as supplementary ...