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Jess Wells is the author of seven novels and five books of short stories, winner of a Nautilus Prize for Fiction, a Foreword Reviews Indies Award for Adult Fiction/Romance, the recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Literature, a four-time finalist for the national Lambda Literary Award, and a member of the Saints & Sinners Literary Hall of Fame. Her work has appeared in more than three dozen literary journals and anthologies, has been reprinted in England and translated into Italian and Dutch. Visit her Wikipedia page.

Dancing Through a Deluge

COMING IN NOVEMBER, 2024. After surviving the horrors of the Black Death, Sister Mary Thomas takes to the road alone, protected from rain and robbers by the skin of a bear.

 

In 1351, many in England begin thinking that their mighty overlords -- Church and Crown - have no control over their fates and a new horizon beckons. It's a time when labor is in high demand, and nature offers immense bounty to those who have survived death and disease.

 

Sister Mary Thomas stumbles into a manor house and when she is mistaken for its Baroness she discovers she now has the power to liberate peasants threatened in new ways and perhaps even build a community where all can ask, "what happens if I get what I have always wanted?"

 

That's where the danger lies: their freedom is a threat to powerful people determined to keep what is theirs.

Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar

Winner of the Nautilus Prize for Small Press Fiction! In 1865 in the shanty town of Tartatenango, the Caketown Bar is owned by the extraordinary Jaguar Paloma and Orietta Becerra who is breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious. They are matriarchs of a village of cast-off mothers, raucous muleteers, forgers and the Romani. Amid a roaring trade in faked marriages just for fun, all balance on the knife-edge between legality and the illicit.  Told in evocative magical realism, Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar is a tale of wronged women who stand up to be counted.

 

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The Mandrake Broom

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction! Now in its second edition as The Mandrake Broom: When the Witches Fought Back

 

In 1465 the world is a dangerous place for women who practice medicine. Even more dangerous for those who defy authority. Luccia Alimenti is a woman who does just that.

As a daughter of one of the legendary female doctors called Salernistas, she travels Europe dispensing herbs, remedies, and the ancient medical texts of Trotula. Those put her in direct conflict with the powerful Inquisition. When she becomes an archer to save women from the pyre, the battle really begins. This is a story based on extensive research of historical events and actual remedies.

 

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Straight Uphill: A Tale of Love and Chocolate

Winner of the Foreword Indies Award for Romance! In a hilltop Italian village, five generations of women confectioners work the improbable magic of love and chocolate. Can a brokenhearted American tourist fight the ghosts of her past to find a new life? Can a courageous mother save the village in the midst of war; and a renegade daughter redefine familial love? Could unlikely couples find each other despite their differences? If an abandoned widow navigates a shifting sense of purpose, will the legacy of chocolatiers take a new turn?

 

A Slender Tether

Amid the turbulent weather of Europe's Little Ice Age, A Slender Tether offers a novel of three linked stories of self-discovery, woven into a rich tapestry of 14th century France. Christine de Pizan, daughter of a disgraced court physician and astrologer, grapples with her ambition to be the first woman writer in France. A doctor finds an unusual way to cope with the death of his wife. And opportunity alternates with disasters in the lives of four commoners, yoked by necessity: a paper-maker struggling to keep his business, a falconer with a mysterious past, a merchant's daughter frantic to avoid an arranged marriage, and a down-on-his-luck musician with a broken guitar and the voice of an angel.

 

Now Available as an Audiobook at Spotify, Audible, retailers and libraries everywhere!

Buy the eBook on Amazon and other retailers.

The Disappearing Andersons of Loon Lake

Love, loss, irony and humor abound in the lives of eight families living around Loon Lake, a shallow fishing spot in Northern Michigan. Whether it's the story of a young dreamer and a bully, a man looking forward to retirement and the family that stands in his way; a teacher facing ethical choices, or a family coping with disaster, these stories delight. Wells' "use of language is like music," critics say. "From the clear and compelling voice of the author comes a narrative that will arrest the attention of any good listener. The writing has something lyrical about it, a poetic quality that will strongly resonate in the heart of the reader." Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite

 

Available on Spotify, Audible and all major retailers and libraries.

The Price of Passion

In The Price of Passion, Simone -- the orphaned, emotionally neglected daughter of a wealthy family -- must earn her inheritance by traveling the globe delivering a message to her dying grandmother's lovers. The young woman hopes that the pilgrimage will help her reconstruct her shadowed family history -- the shape of lives lived without her, but learns that there is a price to be paid for the emotions one is willing to feel, and the truths one is capable of acknowledging.

 

Aftershocks

In this classic tale of control, fear and upheaval, Trout, a successful businesswoman unaccustomed to losing control, and her partner-in-life Patricia, eyewitness the collapse of a building she helped construct. Cherice, a bisexual trapped in an elevator with a straight man and Louise, whose bar becomes a haven for so many, are among those whose lives have suddenly become upended by an 8.0 earthquake in San Francisco.