CKBP Published Books

(Note: All book covers are Amazon purchase links)

Pandion
By William Michael Ried
(author of Backstory and Five Ferries)

Atticus Forester is the son of a billionaire, living a life of privilege between a Manhattan townhouse and Pandion, the family compound on the coast of Maine. But young Atticus misses a flight on his father’s jet, and that changes everything.

Suddenly alone and on the street, Atticus must fend for himself armed only with his wits. He crashes in a Loisaida tenement and invents one scheme after another to feed himself and his dog. But tragedy piles upon tragedy when the jet crash is ruled sabotage, his father’s empire collapses, and a killer stalks what’s left of his family. Now Atticus must face the fact that everything he believed to be true is a lie, and he must find a way to save the ones he loves.

William Michael Ried, the award-winner author of Five Ferries and Backstory, has written a new genre-bending mystery of puzzlement, betrayal and love that will keep you turning pages until the very end.

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The Collector’s World: More Musings on Collecting and American Antiques
By Baron Perlman

Baron Perlman clearly and sensibly discusses the motivations and foibles of collectors, never hesitating to do so with humor and a wry look at himself.

Collecting is an extraordinary pastime. The Collector’s World embraces all those who lust but especially for American antiques and scrutinizes collecting in all its glorious wonder.

Meant for any collector, or those merely trying to understand friends or family who collect, this fun work is written for you.

This book:

Delves into the psychological forces that drive collecting.
Probes the minds and feelings of those who collect – hope, passion, disappointment, happiness, and fulfillment.
Assesses the pressures on collectors to buy and their consequent
Details lessons learned (or waiting to be learned) – a need for courage, patience, and preparation.
Suggests and defends style and connoisseurship criteria.
Confesses and sometimes forgives collector sins and loss of virtue.

Pick up The Collector’s World and indulge in Baron Perlman’s collecting love story. A delicious read awaits you.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Print and ebook design and formatting (paperback and hardcover)
Cover design
Assist with copyediting
Publishing

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Never Tell Chloe
by Diana L. Forsberg

It was the typical summer road trip . . . until it wasn’t.

When twenty-something Chloe agrees to a spur-of-the-moment summer road trip through Wisconsin with her new neighbor, she only wanted a break from her mundane life. Chloe never expected to uncover a family secret long-kept, she certainly never expected the road trip to be dangerous, AND she never suspected that someone wanted her dead.

Her family had vowed to never tell Chloe the horrifying secret about what happened twelve years prior to protect her. But will her family be able to save Chloe from the very real danger that the secret hides—a secret hell-bent to claw its way back into their lives?

Or will the ghosts and angels that Chloe encounters along the way protect her?

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Print design and formatting
Ebook design and formatting
Cover design

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Elizabeth’s First Day of Second Grade
by Elizabeth S Gorshenina

Elizabeth is going to second grade for the first time. She’s very nervous since she isn’t sure if she will see her friends there. Will she need to make new friends? What surprises wait for her at school? You’ll find out once you read the whole book.

Make sure you look at the pictures and words carefully to make a fraise in this book. That is a secret message that only YOU can figure out and solve.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Developmental and Copy Edit
Print book design and formatting
Ebook design and formatting
Assist with publishing

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YoGamers – Yoga Poses for Gamers
by Amber Moss

The first book of its kind! YoGamers! Yoga Poses for Gamers offers relief from the most common physical struggles in the gaming community. It’s lighthearted, informative, and written by a Gamer, just like you. This is no bougie Yoga manual. It’s designed to help you defeat your achy body, so you can game healthier and happier.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Print book design and formatting
Ebook design and formatting
Marketing images

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Backstory
By William Michael Ried
(Author of Five Ferries)

Ansel Tone is a celebrity author on revisionist history and professor of propaganda at Columbia University, who drives fast cars and runs with glamorous women, when his ex-wife gets hurt and he is now responsible for a son he doesn’t know. This on top of juggling an overbearing father who blames Ansel for his wife’s death. Ansel is up for tenure and writing a new book when he attends a Trinity College reunion. One author classmate, Charlie, decides to base a novel on how he won the beautiful Tess away from Ansel at Trinity. Ansel may accept the fact that Charlie married Tess, but the way Charlie remembers the story threatens to reveal secrets that could overturn Ansel’s life.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Editing – developmental, copyedit
Print and ebook design and formatting
Publishing
Assisting cover designer

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Life, Loss & Love: Poems of Prayer and Promise
By Laurie Luongo and Lucas Angelastro

This book of poetry is almost fifty years in the making ~ and covers more than three decades of writings and close to forty years of friendship. Laurie and Lucas became best friends after meeting in Junior High. Both were good students who enjoyed writing and reading. Separately, they started writing poetry and other works and vowed to one day publish the writings. The years went on and by ~ and Lucas, paralyzed as a teenager, died unexpectedly at age 50 in 2002. Laurie continued working in her professional career in Human Resources until late 2016. A few months later, her beloved Mother succumbed to Alzheimer’s. Laurie created her bucket list. of her items was to publish this book. Laurie compiled many of her poems and most of Luke’s writings along with his gratitude journal which is part of this book. It truly was a labor of love.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Print design and formatting
Assisting cover designer
Publishing

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Tanker is Gone
By Jacqueline Wright

While seven-year-old Willis studies his green snake in its plastic, see-through container, his new Black Lab puppy disappears. Mother and Aunt Sheila join in the search at their country home, looking in the garage, walking their long egg-shaped driveway, calling “Tanker,” but…Tanker is gone.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Edit
print (hard and soft cover) and ebook design and formatting
procured and worked with the illustrator
proof
cover design
publishing

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A Measured Thread
By Mary Behan

Fifty years is a long time to keep a secret.

Looking back on her life, Maggie O’Connor is rightfully pleased. Fifty years ago she left Ireland with a single suitcase and a dream. After a long and satisfying career, she is enjoying retirement on her farm in rural Wisconsin — until she falls.

Determined to regain her independence, she hires Isobel, a young woman who is also an emigrant. Helping Maggie clean house, Isobel finds a cache of letters that Maggie wrote to her parents those many years ago and begins to read them aloud to Maggie.

But the letters contain a secret, one that Maggie has kept for fifty years. A secret that threatens to destroy her life and that of the people around her. With little time left, she must make a choice — give up, or face her past.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Edit – developmental and copyedit
Proof
Cover design
Print and ebook design and formatting
Assist with publishing

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Minding the Baby
Written by Jacqueline Wright, Illustrated by Shiela Z.

A baby, a cabin, and hungry wolves.
Will Willis get there in time?

This story takes place in 1866 in Juneau County, Wisconsin, near Lyndon Station. Willis is in charge of his younger brother Andy and his baby brother Vernon, though he’d rather be fishing. Mom has gone to Aunt Eva’s to help her sick baby, and Dad has gone to town to get supplies.

There are two butchered pigs hanging in the yard that attract a pair of hungry wolves. Willis and Andy run to Aunt Eva’s to find their mother. When they get there, their mother asks about baby Vernon. He was left in the cabin, but was the cabin door open or closed? Willis doesn’t remember.

Will Willis get there in time? And what will he find when he gets there?
(To purchase, contact Jacqueline at JackieWrightBooks.com. Available in soft of hardcover)

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Edit
Proof
Assist with cover design
Print design and formatting (soft and hardcover)
Publishing

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The Kaleidoscope – A Novel
By Jacqueline Wright

How can you deal with a situation that keeps changing like a kaleidoscope?

Lilly never wanted to be involved in hiding prohibition stills, but she finds herself at the heart of the deception when her husband, William, the county sheriff and a WWI veteran, is accused of taking bribes to look the other way. Lilly finds it hard to argue with him when he tells her that veterans should be able to have a drink to forget the horrors of the war. But it is against the law and he is the sheriff!

The district attorney, also being paid off to hide the stills, leads a raid with several agents because of dissatisfaction with his portion of the payoff. After the DA is exonerated of his involvement, he is murdered in his home, and fingers automatically point to William. Lilly is thrown into a boiling caldron of accusations, doubts, and fear as she fights to keep her husband from going to jail.

Can Lilly make it through this turmoil as she tries to shield her children, maintain her sanity, and keep food on the table?

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Edit
Proof
Cover design
Print and Ebook design and formatting
Publishing

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Detours: Twelve Stories
By Cynthia Dennis

Uncontrolled obsessions and murky secrets derail ordinary lives into chaos in DETOURS.

Outwardly, they might appear to be everyday souls—an eccentric and lonely dog lover, a cold-blooded and manipulative career woman, an awkward and antisocial fitness class member, a naïve and desperate aspiring actress, a sly and introverted psychiatrist. Yet, beneath their external veneers bubble extraordinary impulses about to be unleashed.

Who would expect them to do the unthinkable—plot a child’s kidnapping, get revenge with a Boa constrictor, or stalk an unsuspecting girl to possess her? Consumed by such escapades, they abandon inhibitions and normalcy in a desperate bid to fulfill far-fetched notions.

As their lives are spun around in pursuit of passions, the characters of DETOURS mirror the confounding enigmas of our human condition. They reflect the myriad mysteries that lie within us all and explore how far someone will deviate to chase compulsions or hide aberrant behavior.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Edit
Proof read
Assist with cover
Print and ebook design and formatting
Publishing

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Come Collect With Me: Musing on Collection and American Antiques
By Baron Perlman

If you are a new collector who is just starting out, a long-time collector, or you know someone who collects, this is the book for you.

Come Collect with Me is for avid collectors of all stripes — from bottle caps, to snow globes to high country Queen Anne — but it is particularly meant for those who cherish and chase American antiques.

This book will:

Explain, confirm, and illuminate questions collectors have about their collecting.
Offer understanding of why collectors collect.
Provide insights into and lessons of collecting that help readers understand the passion and be better collectors.
Teach how to maintain a balancing act between cost and passion.
Explore the “dance” when couples collect together.
Delve into Lessons Learned including the author’s missteps along the way.
Present a recommended reading list for collectors.

Pick up Come Collect With Me and join Baron Perlman’s love story of the world of collecting.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Print and ebook design and formatting
Cover design
Publishing

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Five Ferries
By William Michael Ried

A one-way ticket to “Europe on no dollars a day” buys Stephen Kylemore a trip to love, loss and liberty.

With college behind him and nothing to tie him down, Stephen Kylemore yearns to escape a country and a family torn apart by the Vietnam War. Buoyed by his love of literature and a dream of living an odyssey of his own, he buys a one-way ticket for the journey he will come to call “Europe on No Dollars a Day.”

Stephen joins young people from around the world on a road with no clear destination. He hitchhikes, sleeps in the woods, looks for work and trades one paperback novel for another to maintain his alternate reality. Sympathetic hosts smooth his path, eager to repay kindnesses they received on their own travels. He finds instant friends and transient romance. His months of travel inevitably reveal the circle of life and make him confront the tension and the passion he left behind.

Travelers of a certain age will recognize a world that seems archaic in this day of debit cards and instant communication. But time and technology don’t diminish the universal human experience of survival and redemption, love, loss and liberty that await any traveler breaking trail.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Developmental Editing
Print and ebook design and formatting
Publishing

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Consequences
by Sam Boyd

Honour, duty and keeping a stiff upper lip are seen as the essential characteristics of an English gentleman but they come with Consequences, something Lord Jack Turner learns the hard way. He makes decisions that, at the time, he believes are right but impact the lives of the people he loves the most in ways he could not have predicted. These Consequences create a heady mix of unrequited love, lies, deceit, dishonour and hidden affairs. The friends he loves and thinks he is protecting have hidden agendas that eventually have a deadly impact on them all.

Coming from a working class background, Jack Turner steps into the world of British high society, a world of high stakes and unspoken expectations, when he wins a scholarship to a private prep school and befriends Rupert Winstanley, son of the wealthy Sir Jonathan and Lady Margaret. Jack is afforded opportunities he could only have dreamed of to become Lord Turner, friend to prime ministers and members of the royal family alike.

Boyd weaves a compelling story that highlights the effects wealth, privilege, power and position have on those born into less fortunate circumstances and reminds us that the choices we make, no matter how honourable, all come with Consequences.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Developmental Editing
Print and ebook design and formatting
Cover design
Publishing

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The Faithful Sextant
by Robert Devereux McEliece

A moving and sometimes chilling story of the making of childhood bonds in the 1950s, where young men lived on a dare and were restricted only by their own imaginations. This is a gripping tale of what the Vietnam War did to these boys and their families.

THE FAITHFUL SEXTANT tells of Captain Robert McEliece as he passes through boyhood in Alexandria, Virginia to find manhood in the world of seafarers and the Vietnam War. Bob was one of thousands of civilian sailors who brought the machinery and goods to fight the war and found in so doing, that the war was brought to them.

Work by CKBooks Publishing:

Developmental Edit
Interior Design and Formatting
ebook Design and Formatting
Cover Design
Publishing

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Currencies of August
by Donald Anderson

There is a built-in difficulty convincing a woman you haven’t talked to in 20 years that you’ve loved her since you were six. Compound this with the fact that the woman was your first-grade teacher and now, as a first-year college professor, you have her pleasantly unmotivated son in one of your classes and you have a disastrous encounter just waiting to happen. This is the situation facing Jeremiah Curtin, and it is, perhaps, the defining complication of his life. But there are others. It is when Jeremiah comes upon an abandoned house tucked away in the hills of the Hudson Valley that he feels an answering call to his many questions. The house and property slowly reveal their secrets to Jeremiah and become his new classroom, a place where he comes ever closer to discovering the meaning of love and commitment.

Work done by CKBooks Publishing:

Proofing
ebook and print design and formatting
Cover design
Publishing

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Forbidden Birth
by William Rubin

Doctor Christopher Ravello is driven by an unquenchable desire to avenge his mother’s senseless murder. He forsakes a lucrative career in medicine, and plunges headlong into the brutal, unforgiving world of a New York City homicide detective. Head of the new Division of Medical Crimes, Ravello’s first case pits him against a brilliant, sadistic serial killer. Known only as The Giver, he is hell bent on subjecting young women and their unborn babies to his illicit experiments. As the body count rises, New York City is engulfed in fear. Fighting an illness which threatens his job, immersed in turmoil at home due to his radical career change, Ravello struggles to understand who The Giver is and where he will strike next. Just as he discovers the killer’s identity the unspeakable happens, and Ravello is confronted with an agonizing choice: will he play it safe or make the ultimate sacrifice to save his loved ones and the city he is sworn to protect and serve?

Work done by CKBooks Publishing:

Developmental and copy editing
Proofing
ebook and print design and formatting
Cover design

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What Every Dog and Cat Owner Needs to Know
by Priscilla K. Stockner

“In my 45 years as a veterinary practitioner, I can’t recall the last time I saw a client who didn’t have some or a lot of misinformation about caring for their pet.”

Priscilla K. Stockner, MS, DVM, MBA

Dr. Stockner has a remedy for all this misinformation, for both new and lifetime dog and cat owners.What Every Dog and Cat Owner Needs to Know will thoroughly exam every aspect of owning a dog or cat by bringing the latest scientific information and her many years of experience caring for dogs and cats to you so you can make the best possible decisions for the care of your pet.

Dr. Stockner will cover:

Pet Selection
Routine Care
Feeding Requirements and Myths
Common Items That Can Poison Your Pet
Considerations for Spaying and Neutering
Flea and Tick Control
Common ailments such as Arthritis, Skin Conditions and Urinary Tract Diseases

In addition you will learn about Disaster Preparedness, how to deal with End of Life Issues for your pet and even help you plan for when you are no longer here to take care of them.

Adding a list of Must Read Books and Helpful Websites, What Every Dog and Cat Owner Needs to Know is all you need to keep your loving pet a healthy and happy member of your family.

Work done by CKBooks Publishing:

Editing
Proofing
ebook and print design and formatting
Cover design
Publishing

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Out of Darkness
by Rex Owens

Author Ian Murphy battles lifelong alcoholism and chronic depression. Desperate to cleanse his soul, Ian dedicates himself to finding redemption. To confront his demons, he spends a summer hiking on the Dingle Peninsula. He meets Mairin McCarthy and finds unconditional love but still succumbs to the shadows within. In the fall of 1998 the British government is determined to build walls in Belfast to separate Catholics and Protestants. The only peace citizens of the city can have requires walls. Murphy dedicates himself to stopping more walls from being built. He’s convinced the challenge is his path to redemption. While living in Belfast, Ian learns that distrust and hatred divide the city’s residents as much as the walls do. Both Catholics and Protestants accept the walls as the price of peace. The walls will be built. How will Ian Murphy find redemption and crawl out of the darkness.

Work done by CKBooks Publishing:

Editing
Proofing
ebook and print design and formatting
Cover design
Publishing

(Rex’s first book in the Murphy series is Murphy’s Troubles.)

Work done by CKBooks Publishing:

Editing
Proofing
Publishing

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Twisted Years
by John B. Smith and Ellen Bogner

The Granddaughter of an WWI Vet found her Grandfathers war memoir in her attic and wanted to make it into a book. She knew he had always wanted to do that but never did.

Work done on this book by CKBP:

Cover design – creating a print-ready pdf
Interior design – which included taking the typed document and entering it into the computer and scanning the images into an electronic format needed for print. Creating a print-ready pdf
Purchase of ISBN
Inclusion into the Library of Congress and Browkerlink
Ebook formatting
Assistance with uploading and proofing print book from createspace
Assistance with uploading cover and book to kdp Amazon (Amazon kindle)
Obtained quotes from brick and mortar printers.

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Crystal the Dolphin
by Riyasha Dey Majumdar

The story was created by Riyasha Dey Majumdar (at the age of nine) while during her summer vacation in 2013. It is a fun (and perilous) adventure of a young dolphin and her friends.

It is a hardcover.

Work done on this book by CKBP:

Editing
Cover design
Interior design and formatting – working with the illustrator to create images that fit the page size
Publishing – Assisted the client with setting up the book for print.

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These books (hard cover) were created by a group of middle and grade school children for a summer school writing and publishing class Christine Keleny ran.