THE BLACK ROSES AND THE URBAN TALES chronicles three tales set deep in the urban society,dealing with men of color and all ages,some as sweet and appealing as roses but having metaphorically speaking thorns just as well.One tale involves a loyal handsome man whose welcomed a beautiful baby boy whom he conceived with his girlfriend into their lives,but chaos breaks out when he discovers she's been keeping a deep dark secret that could affect their entire family.The man discovers that his loyalty in putting off his own secret urges and desires for others of the same sex and the opposite sex may not have been enough.Warning:Strong sexual content and violence,nudity and language.

From the Bram Stoker Award–winning author who “pretty much invented the punk vampire thing”: A vampire vigilante is in Deadtown to destroy her own (Seconds Magazine). As the convenience store doors close behind him, DeShawn can already hear the sirens. He sprints down the street, clutching his meager haul, but the police are gaining on him. He turns the corner onto a cobblestoned alley and the sirens stop. The police have turned back, and for a moment, DeShawn feels lucky. It doesn’t last. A crawling man leaps up from the shadows, wraps his arms around DeShawn’s neck, and feeds on his blood. Welcome to Deadtown. A city within a city where the undead roam free, Deadtown is dangerous for humans and vampires alike. As a gang war rages between the old guard and the new, Deadtown’s innocents are caught in the crossfire. Only Sonja Blue can save them. A vampire with a sense of justice, she will play both ends against the middle to save Deadtown—or else burn it to the ground.

Will the bayou with its mysteries protect them or pull them down into its depths? Proprietress of the Rose Noire salon and New Orleans native Mia LeMay has secluded herself in the French Quarter—a place safe for those with secrets—for as long as she can remember. But when Mia is witness to a murder, fear and desire morph into one when agent Rick Ryder barges into her cloistered world. With Mia as his guide they enter the glades of Louisiana looking for a killer, but find more mystery and specters in the swampland. The darkness is a lure to Mia and Rick as they discover attraction in the shadows that are a welcome cover for a killer. Together, as they start to fall in love, nothing is what it seems—least of all the ghosts of their pasts.

The Legend of the Black Rose A TRUE STORY: In the 1960s, star-crossed lovers fall in love on the Spanish Trail, too young to imagine the consequences... Martinez had me looking straight down the barrel of his rifle before I could close my truck door and get to the garden gate. I froze just as I was, half-turned. Rosa was screaming my name behind her Papa inside the front door, and I could hear her mother yelling at her and restraining her. "Get off my land, Bobby, or I'll call the police!" Martinez commanded. "It isn't her fault!" I shouted straight down the sidewalk because I had no other choice. "Bobby!" she was screaming. "Papa dont shoot Bobby!" Martinez discharged the rifle where he stood, above my head. That settled it. Raising my hands, I slowly backed into the cab and got in. She screamed until she heard the GMC start up; then, realizing I was still alive, it stopped."

A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.

Jason Chandler, a U.S. Senator from California, believes he's destined for the White House. No one will stand in his way. A woman’s work hard to forget her past with Chandler. She’s eliminated him from her world and made a new life for herself in Colorado. But the Senator believes their past holds the key to his future, a past that must never be revealed. He’s battling for his career, she’s fighting for her life. The odds appear stacked in the Senator’s favor. In his attempts to preserve his political life, Chandler must eliminate the unseemly parts of his past. He’s playing to win, but underestimates the power of friendship and how hard those who seek justice will fight back.

A fictional biography chronicles the story of Madame C.J. Walker, who rose from the poverty of her former slave parents to found a marketing empire that made her America's first African American female millionaire.

Helen A Rosburg's book of poems focuses on the cycles of nature and art through time, the resonance of vivid memories, the potency of the present moment, and the eternal quality of being. Infused with musicality, romance, and wit, these imaginative poems explore the whimsical dialogue between a cat and her human companion, the legend of the white stallion's creation, a tale of love in ancient Catalina, a western ghost story, and more. Making satisfying connections, this lyrical compilation highlights the cyclical beauty of nature and love.

Carmen, Sister-heir of a wealthy manor, leaves her privileged life to honor her father\'s last request—-to save a code book. Iit implicates the priesthood in a plot to create a doomsday weapon and establish a theocracy. Desperate to protect the code book, Carmen allies with Aton, a mutant warrior with extra-sensory ability from a neighboring hostile land. His drive to provide a better life for his people earns Carmen\'s admiration as she sees the misery in his mythical lands. He\'s convinced their destiny is together, but she can\'t see a future with him, a hated mutant, a killer, unless he wins her heart.

“The Black Rose” is the story of a young, multi-talented and feisty Iranian woman who decided to steer a different path from the orthodox and blinkered path of her society at the age of 19 and pursued her American Dream wholeheartedly without fail. Life became an agony for her in the Middle East as a woman, as a human being, as an individual, as a gender minority, as a religious minority, as an activist-to-be, as an artist, or just simply as a member of the society. A strong teenage girl with grand dreams who defied the odds and persevered up until the age of 33 as a mature woman for the sake of her lofty ideals. She was starved of her every single right in every sense of the word. She was behind the closed doors to which she did not hold the key. She was totally fenced-in, with her wings clipped, with her voice confined and with her life and future being left at the mercy of the merciless authorities. She was an epitome of an oppressed artist. The content to most of her art pieces were totally against the bigoted norms and laws of the Middle Eastern societies. In particular, her LGBTQI-centric art pieces which would drag her into persecution, imprisonment and death as an immediate fate, and some of her pieces also dealt with societal maladies which were regarded highly contentious in that part of the world. Therefore, she could never publish or share her art pieces. First, she started to resist and defy the wave of ostracism at her country; afterwards, when things bordered on persecution, she fled Iran and signed up with UNHCR in Ankara, Turkey with the hope of freedom. Her case was deemed as a special case, courtesy of the fact that she was an artist, and received expedited treatment. She soon got recognized by UNHCR as a refugee and her case was sent to the resettlement agency to be relocated to a third country. To her dismay, around that time, there had been a newly-appointed prerequisite for the resettlement process; that the cases up for resettlement, should be interviewed by Turkey’s DGMM (Directorate General of Migration Management), or in another words, the government of Turkey. The government of Turkey twisted everything and rejected her case and suspended and blocked her resettlement and lined her up for deportation to Iran. She tried to seek help from everywhere, but no one reached out a hand for her to hold and she was left out on a limb. She fled Iran to seek freedom in the land of opportunity, but got stuck in an even more complex quagmire in Turkey. All her talents, efforts and hopes went down the drain and instead of actualizing her American Dream, she met her untimely demise in the cruelest fashion.