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Strong Women
Bootlegger’s Apprentice follows a young bootlegger through the violence and glamour of Prohibition-era Chicago as he discovers that escaping the criminal underworld may be the only way to protect his family. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I fostered an interest in Irish American organized crime from on-screen stories such as The Departed and Boardwalk Empire, through histories of Prohibition Chicago, and fiction such as Don Winslow’s City on Fire trilogy and Mary Miley’s Spirits and Smoke. My family is heavily influenced by my Irish American Grandma Margaret Miller (nee McCarthy), and I combined that with my own experience growing up Catholic (I am now Agnostic) surrounded by strong women to create Aiden McCarthy.
How did you balance real figures and events with Aiden’s fictional journey?
Figures like Louis Armstrong and Mezz Mezzrow, along with real clubs, allow me to really explore Aiden’s interaction with the jazz scene, intoxication, and the experience of African Americans. Much like my own growth from a predominantly white childhood to encountering folks of all different skin colors, Aiden finds beauty in those with different backgrounds. I wrote Aiden’s story to respect and be real about history and race. His friendship with William Crutchfield, Dean O’Banion’s actual porter, is written as a nod to my own experience. I aim to give the story more flavor.
Aiden grows from being bootlegging muscle to club negotiator to having to kill in self-defense. I textured his moral journey with actual events in Dean O’Banion’s history where O’Banion’s hubris eventually gets the best of him. Aiden comes to terms with life-and-death decisions as O’Banion makes a fatal mistake.
The novel writes O’Banion with a certain degree of charity, but he really was rather open-minded for his day on African Americans and homosexuals. “They can’t help how they are” is a direct quote from an O’Banion biography.
Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, and various politicians and police who encounter Aiden and O’Banion allow me to inject a certain amount of authenticity into how I imagine Jazz Age Chicago. I enjoy figures such as crusading journalist Robert St. John, who formed an uneasy defiance to Capone and is interesting to me because of my background in journalism. The corruption really existed as portrayed, but I did take quite a bit of liberty to make one of O’Banion’s antagonists into a juicy character.
The novel handles Al Capone as a human who cares for his family, his partially deaf son, and his older brother mainly. He is also a thug driven by an inability to cope with sorrow (no spoilers) and his place in the mob hierarchy.
At what point in developing the novel did you know that Aiden would spare Capone and bargain for his family’s safety instead?
Al Capone has to live, but I want Aiden to really challenge his morality when it comes to using lethal force. Aiden has a certain ethical code, sees the logic in his decisions, and is supported by strong women to make better choices. I don’t want to give away any spoilers.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have started a prequel to my Ron & Carey series. The series is about an Army veteran, Ron McCallister, who charms adversaries and his lover alike while outmaneuvering crooked politicians and bloodthirsty thugs from 2008 to 2009. I want to explore Ron’s return from Iraq around 2005 and run-ins with the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club and corrupt authorities as he reconciles his new reality and eventual introduction to a stripper with a heart of gold. While Ron broods and kicks ass, his Aunt Peggy serves up homespun spitfire, much like my Grandma Margaret and Great Aunt Ethel.
I’ll maybe publish it in about five or so years. Good stories take time!
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Chicago, 1924. Prohibition has made criminals rich, politicians dangerous, and loyalty a currency all its own.
Aiden McCarthy is a young Irish American drawn toward a life far more dangerous than arranging bouquets.
Working under notorious gangster and florist Dean O’Banion, Aiden is drawn deeper into a world where bootleg whiskey, political corruption, and organized crime collide, and where men like Johnny Torrio and Al Capone are reshaping Chicago from the shadows.
Yet amid the violence and intrigue, Aiden has something worth protecting. His relationship with Sophia Golino offers the promise of a life separate from the dangerous men who increasingly depend upon him.
Around them, the clubs and speakeasies of Jazz Age Chicago pulse with music, temptation, and shifting social boundaries.
As rival gangs maneuver for power and a bitter political struggle threatens to turn deadly, Aiden must learn quickly whom to trust, when to fight, and just how much of himself he is willing to sacrifice to survive.
A richly imagined historical crime novel of gangsters, romance, jazz, family, faith, and ambition, set against one of Chicago’s most notorious eras.
Step into Prohibition-era Chicago, where love, loyalty, and one wrong choice can cost everything.
Power, Loyalty, and Legacy
The Cost We Pay follows a grieving father whose quest for vengeance and expanding criminal power collide with a ruthless Chicago mob boss, exposing the destructive line between love, protection, and possession. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
First off, I am thrilled to have back-to-back 5-star reviews, first with The Sins We Inherit and now with the sequel, The Cost We Pay. When I finished The Sins We Inherit, I knew the second book couldn’t simply be bigger—it had to be more personal. Cost spends the first novel convincing himself that everything he does is about protecting his family. In The Cost We Pay, I wanted to test that belief.
Maddy’s shooting forces him to confront something he can’t fix, control, or intimidate away. Instead of dealing with that pain, he doubles down on the one thing he understands: control. The tragedy is that he continues calling it protection even as the people closest to him begin experiencing it as possession.
How did you create tension between the Milwaukee and Chicago criminal organizations?
I wanted Milwaukee and Chicago to feel distinct, but I also wanted to bring some realism to the historical connective tissue between organized crime in the two cities. Milwaukee has always existed in Chicago’s shadow geographically, and historically there were relationships and connections between their criminal worlds as well.
In the novel, Cost’s organization is more personal—built around family, neighborhood history, relationships, and loyalty. Chicago operates on a different scale and with different math. John Decesso sees people, businesses, and even relationships as assets. That contrast creates tension before anyone ever fires a shot. Cost is accustomed to being the most powerful person in the room, and suddenly he’s dealing with someone whose reach extends well beyond his own.
Did any secondary character become more important during the writing process than you originally expected?
Definitely Nico Vistoso. After what happens at the end of the first book, it would have been easy to treat Nico simply as someone Cost needs to punish. But the more I wrote him, the more interested I became in his guilt and the consequences of what he’d done. His interaction with Maddy became especially important because it allowed me to explore accountability and forgiveness from a completely different perspective than Cost’s obsession with revenge.
Tiger also became increasingly important even though he’s no longer alive. His journal originally came from an idea I had for a separate story about Tiger’s rise and Cost’s fall. Eventually I realized the journal belonged inside this novel. It gave me a way to expand the mythology of the Caduto family while allowing Tiger’s words to challenge Cost’s romanticized ideas about power, loyalty, and legacy.
Can you give readers a glimpse inside the next installment of The Sins We Inherit Saga?
Book III is the reckoning.
The first two books have been about inheritance, power, consequence, and the choices Cost makes in the name of protecting the people he loves. The final installment will be less about expanding that universe and more about forcing Cost to face everything those choices have created.
At its heart, the question becomes much simpler: after everything he’s done and everything it’s cost him, is redemption still possible—or has the fall already been set in motion?
I want the final book to bring the story full circle. Not necessarily bigger. Just inevitable.
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In The Sins We Inherit, Costantino “Cost” Caduto II thought he had finally buried the sins of his fathers and stood at the edge of a safe life for his daughter Maddy and new fiancé Maria.
Then a bullet ripped through his daughter’s chest and shattered his world. Now, for a father pushed to his limits, there is only revenge and its consequences.
In The Cost We Pay, Cost faces a war on every front:The law closing in, patient and relentless
The Chicago Outfit boss, resourced and poised to take advantage of Cost’s vulnerability
And the man in the mirror, spiraling darker and more dangerous with every decision he makes
Set in the brimming contrast between Milwaukee’s blue-collar days and gritty underworld nights, The Cost We Pay continues the relentless saga of legacy, loyalty, and the price of becoming the thing you hate.
The Cost We Pay – Book II of The Sins We Inherit Saga
Carlo J. Emanuele’s The Cost We Pay is a bruising crime novel about inherited power and the damage done when love becomes possession. After Costantino “Cost” Caduto’s daughter, Maddy, is shot and paralyzed, he channels his grief into vengeance while extending his family’s control across Milwaukee. That expansion draws the attention of Chicago boss John Decesso, a polished manipulator who treats people as assets, gifts, and bargaining chips. The resulting conflict is certainly a mob war, but its real subject is Cost’s conviction that protecting his family gives him the right to control everyone around him.
Emanuele tells the story through several viewpoints, and that broader perspective gives the violence genuine emotional weight. Maddy’s struggle with paralysis, Nico Vistoso’s guilt, Detective D’Angelo’s obsessive investigation, and the growing unease among Cost’s own men all reveal consequences Cost refuses to see. The strongest device is the journal left by Cost’s grandfather, Tiger. Its entries gradually strip the romance from his criminal legacy, showing that fear created obedience at the cost of intimacy, trust, and peace. Some confrontations repeat the same emotional argument, and the prose occasionally explains a character’s motives after the scene has already made them clear. Still, the shifting loyalties and competing versions of family keep the story moving.
This book reminded me of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Both books explore a gifted man who believes he can use criminal power to secure his family’s future, only to discover that power reshapes the family it’s supposed to protect. Cost shares Michael Corleone’s talent for turning personal pain into strategy, though he’s more emotionally exposed and far less disciplined. Emanuele also spends more time with the people living inside the blast radius, particularly Maddy. Her plea that “someone has to forgive” becomes the book’s moral center, challenging the family logic that every wound creates a debt and every debt demands blood.
What stayed with me was the gap between the father Cost imagines himself to be and the father Maddy actually experiences. He loves her fiercely, but she needs his presence more than his empire, and the book understands how difficult that truth is for him to accept. The final chapters bring the various conflicts together in a violent, satisfying reckoning, then close on a cruelly precise collision of hope and accountability. The Cost We Pay is a dark, emotionally direct family saga with the machinery of a gangster thriller and the conscience of a story about fathers, children, and the legacies they choose to continue.
Pages: 363 | ASIN : B0HFZ7VXN7
Powerful Anchor
Borrowed Tales follows a lonely, troubled man whose vivid barroom recollections force him to confront the unsettling possibility that the memories defining his life may belong to other people. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Sam’s life was shaped from pieces of my early years. Although the story is about ninety‑five percent fiction, certain moments from my past inspired the emotional backbone of his journey. For example, my cousin and his girlfriend used to take me cruising down Main Street, and that simple memory became the backdrop for Sam’s innocent yet troubled youth. Several of his experiences are shaped by real fragments of my life, reimagined to serve the story’s deeper themes.
Why did you choose Leo’s neighborhood bar as the central setting and framing device for Sam’s stories?
Leo’s represents the kind of quiet, familiar establishments I’ve visited over the years. I wanted a place where Sam could sit, listen to music, observe people, and let his mind wander — not a loud, crowded bar, but a “Cheers‑like” environment where everyone knows each other.
Routine and structure were essential for Sam. After years of being told what to do and when to do it, that rhythm became ingrained in him. Leo’s offered the stability he needed to process the memories he believed were his own.
Music frequently triggers Sam’s recollections. What role did particular songs or musical eras play in shaping the novel?
Music has always been a powerful anchor in my life. I often remember events based on the songs that were playing at the time. Even now, I prefer writing in a small bar where one drink lasts for hours. It was during one of those writing sessions — while working on Olivia — that the premise for Borrowed Tales emerged.
Music pulls memories to the surface: where I was, what I was doing, and often a smile that comes with it. For instance, whenever I hear “I Want You” by Savage Garden, I’m transported back to Kuwait, lying on a cot outside my tent, hearing that song for the first time.
Sam’s memories, however, were different. His were learned, not lived. Anyone who has dealt with psychosis knows how convincingly memories or alternate realities can present themselves — as real as the air we breathe.
How did you approach balancing the novel’s humor and sexually charged episodes with its darker themes of abuse, crime, incarceration, and trauma?
I intentionally kept most of the sexually charged moments in the early chapters. I considered explaining their origin upfront but ultimately chose to reveal the truth behind Sam’s memories much later. That delay allows readers to initially see Sam as a reckless womanizer, someone who took advantage of the women he encountered. In reality, being incarcerated so young meant he had no real sexual experiences. He simply absorbed the stories of others — repeated over and over, year after year.
Trauma is rarely discussed openly, yet it shapes people in profound ways. I drew from my own experiences to frame Sam’s mindset. As I wrote, the stories expanded naturally, each keystroke adding depth. All my books carry a significant thread of trauma because I want readers to understand that emotional wounds come from many environments — not just war zones or dangerous neighborhoods. Real people, from all walks of life, carry lifelong scars that shape them and everyone around them.
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Most days, Sam hides in the dim comfort of Leo’s, a quiet neighborhood bar where the jukebox drowns out the memories he can’t bear to face. But when the music triggers vivid, uncontrollable flashbacks, Sam is pulled into the darkest corners of his history—abandonment, abuse, betrayal, and a crime that stole his youth and reshaped his identity forever.
As the episodes intensify, Sam begins reliving the moments he has spent decades trying to forget: the chaotic childhood that left him unanchored, the cousin who dragged him into a nightmare, the prison years that hardened and hollowed him, and the trauma that fractured his sense of self. Each flashback reveals another piece of a life he never fully understood—one built on borrowed stories, buried truths, and memories that were never truly his.
But in the present, Sam finds an unexpected lifeline in Erin, a sharp-witted bartender with struggles of her own. Their connection forces Sam to confront the possibility of healing—and the terrifying risk of letting someone in. As their bond deepens, Sam must decide whether he can trust himself enough to be loved, or whether the weight of his past will destroy the future he desperately wants.
Borrowed Tales is a raw, deeply human story about trauma, identity, and the long road toward redemption. With unflinching honesty and emotional depth, Michael E. Bowers delivers a powerful narrative about the scars we carry, the memories we inherit, and the courage it takes to reclaim a life once lost.
Misplaced Trust
The Climb follows a grieving attorney and an international missionary team whose journey into a politically unstable nation becomes increasingly dangerous and deadly. What inspired the idea behind The Climb and the larger series you’re beginning with this novel?
I joined a mission trip to South America in 2018. That trip was preceded by several years of court work as a lawyer, along with the experiences of my early life. Together, these influences sparked the idea behind The Climb. However, while they shaped the framework of the story, their role provides more context than consequence. The real mission trip was very different from the one portrayed in the novel, and although the main character borrows elements from my life, many aspects diverge—such as the death of Sarah.
The true driving forces behind The Climb and its plot were several, including, inter alia, a human‑trafficking seminar I attended in 2017 and various influences from film, music, literature, and news. The motivational tone of the novel grew out of two long‑standing aspects of my personality: motivation and faith. I have always viewed hardship as a platform for growth. But the only way to truly achieve that is through Christ, and the best way to show that to others is by using the talents He has given me.
My walk with God has been far from perfect. Very often, it feels as though the things I want to do, I do not. Interestingly, that struggle became a thread stitching pieces of the novel together. Many of the characters in The Climb reflect that reality. They come from imperfect backgrounds and lead imperfect lives. Their struggles mirror my own walk with God.
The novel explores trust on several levels, including trust in other people, leaders, institutions, and God. Why was trust such an important theme for this story?
Trust is something many overlook, yet it can have tremendous impact. When attempting a difficult journey, misplaced trust can derail us and prevent us from completing it. Sometimes that comes from an overreliance on others or on things. Other times, it comes from the overconfidence we place in our own abilities. The book uses this theme to remind us whom we should truly trust. We are imperfect creatures—failing even ourselves. How could we expect others not to fail us?
What do you hope readers take from the idea that faith doesn’t necessarily prevent hardship but can influence how someone moves through it?
“Faith doesn’t prevent hardship” is a takeaway in and of itself. Faith is one of many approaches a person can take when facing difficulty. Some always run. Some place trust in themselves. Others place trust in things or people. Choosing faith ensures God is present when hardship comes. However, no matter what choice we make, life quickly teaches us—we must choose.
Will future books continue exploring Santiago and its political and criminal conflicts, or will the series broaden into other settings and challenges?
The story will remain rooted in Santiago. However, the geographical settings continue to change as the narrative moves forward, and new challenges will emerge.
At the conclusion of The Climb, the characters aren’t necessarily safe. Many events in the book carry deeper significance than readers may initially realize. The origins of certain characters—and the reasons they find themselves in this dangerous situation—take on greater meaning as the larger narrative unfolds.
As for timing, I can’t yet say when the next installment will be released. I only write when I’m able to, and I take my time, because writing should be enjoyable.
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After the death of his fiancée—three months pregnant—Mark Crosby lost sight of the life he once knew. He performs his 9-to-5 job and returns home to his elderly grandmother, occasionally attending a nearby church, if only just. But the invitation of an old presbyter changes everything: a mission trip to the breakaway territory of Santiago—the last place on Earth he wanted to go.
Joining a team of eight volunteers—alongside three missionaries, a bus conductor, the driver, and his family—he embarks on a journey through a country caught between escalating civil unrest and a strained dictatorship.
When their trip to the remote village of Puerto Palermo takes a wrong turn, the tour bus crashes off the road near a deep precipice, and Crosby makes a troubling discovery—the accident wasn’t an accident.
Fallible and Not Bulletproof
Jack Spetza – Flawed follows a fashion designer who uncovers her mother’s ancient secret and is pulled into a dangerous conspiracy involving lost history, time travel, advanced technology, and a mysterious soldier-author with hidden motives. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I wrote every day for a few hours just putting down ideas, and when Jack was born, the rate of words and scenarios increased exponentially.
Jack Spetza is a hero who is charming, flawed, dangerous, and unpredictable. What interested you about writing a protagonist who doesn’t fit the traditional heroic mold?
I just felt comfortable with having Jack be fallible and not bulletproof, because otherwise it wouldn’t be realistic, and with all of his experience, he could usually handle himself and most situations he ended up being in.
The novel balances action, humor, romance, science fiction, and historical mystery. Was maintaining that balance challenging, and how did you decide when to lean into each genre element?
I wrote every chapter like a short story, then as I got closer to the end of the book, I started putting each chapter in the place I thought made the most sense.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
Jack Spetza will ride again in the second and third books, with the second becoming available next year.
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Drawn into a war that stretches across time itself, Jack is thrown together with Setrina La Touche, the woman he never truly got over and the heir to her mother’s research into an ancient tribe that mysteriously disappeared centuries ago.
From Parisian alleyways to hidden Moroccan caves, betrayal is constant, trust is rare, and every move sends ripples through past and future. Time doesn’t forgive, and there’s no clean way to get your hands dirty.
Jack Spetza – Flawed will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Jack Spetza – Flawed
In Jack Spetza: Flawed, A.S. Warnock sends fashion designer Setrina La Touché into the blast radius of her late mother’s buried archaeological secret: a glowing ancient tablet tied to Imhotep, missing Berber history, wormholes, corporate weaponry, and a soldier-turned-author named Jack Spetza who is far more dangerous than his book-launch charm suggests. What begins with grief, a stolen journal, and a Parisian reunion soon becomes a sprint through nanotech conspiracy, time travel, mercenaries, ancient prophecy, and the moral wreckage left behind when powerful people decide history is theirs to edit.
I enjoyed the book most when it lets its odd ingredients collide without apology. The story has the momentum of an action film that has been drinking espresso: Paris bookstores, Moroccan caves, Mech Mosquitoes, ancient Egyptian ambition, stolen artifacts, and gunfire all crowd the same stage. Setrina’s narration gives the chaos a personal sting. Her grief over Angelique is not ornamental; it’s the emotional bruise beneath the spectacle. Even when the plot is gleefully overstuffed, that mother-daughter fracture keeps the novel from floating away into pure gadgetry.
Jack is a deliberately messy hero, and that mess is part of the pleasure. He’s funny, bruised, lethal, romantic, evasive, and occasionally ridiculous in a way that makes him feel less polished than the standard thriller protagonist. The banter can be profane and broad, but it has personality, especially when Setrina pushes back against Jack’s swagger. I also liked Baya’s role as more than a historical curiosity; her presence gives the time-travel premise tenderness and danger. The book’s rough edges are visible, but so is its appetite. It wants to entertain, shock, flirt, philosophize, and blow something up, sometimes all on the same page.
This book is best for readers who like science fiction, time travel adventure, action thrillers, and conspiracy fiction with a comic, high-velocity edge. Fans of Clive Cussler’s artifact-hunting adventures or Michael Crichton’s techno-paranoia should find familiar pleasures here, though Warnock’s voice is rowdier, more Australian, and less clinically polished. Jack Spetza: Flawed is a wild and inventive ride.
Pages: 271 | ASIN : B0DJLF37RH
Pain Killer
Pain Killer, by R.K. McKean, is a dark psychological thriller about grief, revenge, and the terrible afterlife of buried violence. The novel follows TJ Maverick, a psychology professor and criminal profiler whose life has already been carved by loss, from childhood tragedy to the death of his wife, Suzanne, in the 9/11 attacks. When a series of ritualistic murders points toward old crimes at the University of Florida, TJ is pulled into a case where the killer is not merely hunting victims but trying to cauterize a wound that never healed.
I was pulled in by the book’s insistence that pain is never inert. It moves, mutates, leaks into families, marriages, faith, addiction, and violence. McKean doesn’t treat trauma as a decorative backstory. He makes it the engine of the novel. TJ is compelling because he isn’t a stainless hero. He’s wounded, intelligent, devotional, angry, loving, and still unfinished. The result is a protagonist who feels less like a genre instrument and more like a man trying to keep his soul from becoming shrapnel.
I also appreciated the novel’s moral tension. Pain Killer is brutal in places, but its deeper interest isn’t gore; it’s consequence. The killer’s actions are horrifying, yet the motive grows from a recognizably human ache, which makes the story more troubling than a simple monster hunt. At times, the book moves with the force of a police procedural, and at other times it slows into grief-lit reflection, especially around TJ’s love for Suzanne and his attempts to live after devastation. That mixture gives the novel a unique tenderness beneath its violence.
This book will appeal most to readers of crime fiction, psychological suspense, revenge thrillers, and FBI profiler novels. Fans of James Patterson’s fast, violent plotting or David Baldacci’s justice-driven suspense may find familiar pleasures here, though McKean brings a more pastoral, grief-conscious sensibility to the material. Pain Killer is a thriller about the frightening distance between surviving pain and surrendering to it.
Pages: 366 | ISBN : 978-1958723678
