Sharon O. Lightholder
 

As Good as a Fire 


When Peg Ryan has a chance to join her Marine fighter pilot husband in Tsingtao, China in 1947, she jumps at it. After their separation during World War II and his year in China, her family could be whole again. Soon Peg and her seven-year-old daughter are on a transport ship to China forming friendships with other Marine families. 


Once the Riviera of the Orient, Peg discovers Tsingtao's layered complexity as she lives in a mansion with servants, volunteers at a local orphanage, and befriends those who mingle with the international community. Her life becomes tangled with others through loves, losses, births, deaths, and intrigue in a city where little is as it seems. 


As Mao's troops threaten the city and its strategic port, Peg will discover if coming to China has saved or destroyed her family.

Jefferson’s Chef: James Hemings - From Slavery to Freedom

 

When Thomas Jefferson travels to Paris in 1784 to negotiate trade treaties for America, he takes the enslaved James Hemings with him as his manservant. Living in Paris, where the French had abolished slavery, Hemings discovers an independence, a skill, and a romance beyond his imagination. Torn between family and freedom as the French Revolution erupts, Hemings makes a choice that changes Jefferson and America. 

 

Sharon O. Lightholder’s imagined biography, Jefferson’s Chef: James Hemings - From Slavery to Freedom, is based on extensive legal, culinary, and historical research into Hemings’s life and times, including primary materials from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. 

 

Combining the political and the personal, Jefferson’s Chef: James Hemings - From Slavery to Freedom creates a unique and intimate portrait of two exceptional men and discloses why Hemings was the only one of Jefferson’s hundreds of slaves who was unconditionally freed during Jefferson’s lifetime. Lightholder uses fiction to expose the astounding story of James Hemings and how his fierce desire for freedom changed his world and ours. 

 

 
THE PARIS DRAFT - THE ROAD BACK FROM DEMENTIA

World famous thriller author, Jack Forester, is estranged from his family and struggling with writer's block in his Connecticut cabin. When his agent reminds him that his draft is due in a month, Jack lies that he just needs a few "location" updates in Paris to polish it. His agent arranges for Jack and a new editor, twenty-something Eileen Ross, to stay in a luxurious apartment in Paris. Eileen soon discovers that Jack hasn't written one word and that both of their careers are about to crash. Eileen suggests several writing stragegies, all of which defeat Jack.  Fearing for his safety and sanity, she contacts Dr. Greg Patel, a former lover who is a research physician in Paris. Together, Jack, Eileen and Greg face life-altering crossroads. 
THE BALDWIN PORTOLANO 


In 1916, the market for stolen antiquities is booming. When Jack Meade, an American oilman and antiquarian, buys an unsorted collection of old maps, he discovers a priceless Viking-era map hidden in the crate. The royal seal on the map is that of King Baldwin who claimed it for his collection during the Eleventh Century. The fabled Baldwin Portolano has an Old English riddle on it which points to the location of a multi-million dollar treasure hoard.


Hidden in the riddle is a both a missing part of England’s history and a threat to its future. If the German agents on Meade’s trail get the map and decode it it first, the treasure could fund Germany’s military advantage.

 

British Intelligence dispatches a shell-shocked linguistic scholar from the trenches of France and a female physician, who is also an amateur archeologist, to assist Meade. The three must outrun Germany’s top Secret Agent, outwit the ancient riddle-maker, and conquer their inner demons if England is to have its treasure, its history, and peace.

THE ENGLISH RENDITION 


Every family has a secret. When families are drawn together by music and torn apart by war, new secrets are born. Rachel Havel is a young Jewish violinist from Prague who studies at the Geneva Conservatory. She escapes to London when Hitler annexes her country.


In London, she assumes the identity of an English woman and comes to America as a war-bride. When a well-meaning attorney discovers that she is the holder of a dormant bank account hidden by Swiss bankers, her life of lies is threatened. She must decide whether to tell her daughter and granddaughter the truth or live her lie. 


Either choice will change lives.