WILLIAM KOWALSKI

'On my very last day of being 16 years old, I fell through the roof of our barn and broke my leg in three places. I was just in a climbing mood I guess - the kind of mood that can overtake a girl sometimes on a hot July day, thinking that if something glamorous doesn't happen soon, right that minute, she'd go crazy.' Meet the unforgettable Haley Bombauer - a truly offbeat and endearing heroine - as she teeters on the brink of womanhood...Haley, also known as 'Flash Jackson', seems doomed to spend the summer in a cast, absolutely bored out of her skull. But in a strange twist of fate, Haley's 'imprisonment' gives her peculiar grandmother the chance finally to see what the girl is made of - and maybe pass on to her some of the mysterious and mystical arts that only she knows. As Haley comes to understand just who her grandmother is, and what the old woman can teach her, she is transformed - from tomboy to extraordinary woman…

My name, for what it's worth, is William Amos Mann the Fourth, and I arrived in Santa Fe on the back of my steel-gray 1977 Kawasaki KZ1000, bringing with me only what I could carry on the back of it: an antique typewriter, some books, and a few articles of clothing. I'd just turned twenty, or so I assumed - my exact date of birth, like my origins, was unknown, so my grandfather had had to invent one on my behalf.In search of the mother he has never known, Billy is flying south on his motorcycle to her last known address, a side street in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There he encounters as vibrant a cast of characters as the world can offer, including Eliza and her crazy daughter, and Consuelo, a beautiful gypsy Latina. Consuelo sings at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame bar. She is waiting for stardom, but Billy comes along first. When she finally gets her big break, Consuelo wants him to leave with her for Los Angeles. But Billy has still not told Eliza his secret - that he is the baby she deserted twenty years ago. Life is all about choices and now Billy is faced with the biggest choice of all: Eliza, whom he must know in order to know himself, or Consuelo, the woman he loves more than anyone else in the world.

A 20 year old sets off on a road trip to New Mexico in search of his mother who deserted him as a baby. It is a journey that will teach him many things about family, friends, love and death.

The Good Neighbour effortlessly weaves together the tragic stories of two families, hauntingly linked by whispers across the centuries. When Colt and Francie Hart stumble upon an empty, 150-year-old house during a weekend drive in the country, each of them falls in love and wants to buy it - for entirely different reasons. For Colt, the house will become a trophy to his enormous success at trading stocks. For Francie, a blocked poet, the house seems to offer a chance for her to reawaken her creativity. Yet the more the Harts learn about the house, its history and its previous inhabitants, the more it drives them apart. When they meet their new neighbour, a descendant of the house's original owners, they inadvertently start a war over Colt's plan to move the family cemetery off their property. Colt returns to the city, leaving Francie to deal with the angry neighbour, but the consequences of his actions follow him there - while at the same time old secrets of his own resurface, forcing him to confront his family -- and himself.Events that conspire to destroy their marriage could just as easily bring them together again, in this story of two people who, in looking for a place to call home, find themselves instead.

When Colt and Francie Hart drive out of New York one weekend and come across an empty house dating back to the Civil War, they are both seized by a desire to buy it. For Colt it is a symbol of his financial success, for Francie, a frustrated poet, it promises a return to creativity. However, their lives soon become overshadowed by the tragic events that beset the Musgrove family, owners of the house 150 years before, and the Harts are drawn into violent conflict with their descendants. As events past and present conspire to destroy their relationship, Colt and Francie's love and fidelity are sorely tested. Kowalski examines the distances that can spring up between two people and those that can grow imperceptibly over years. The difference between need and love is brought sharply to the fore as the author brings us to question the very purpose of marriage, when two people, looking for a home, find themselves instead.