Now Available!
Amazon Kindle | Amazon Paperback | Apple Books | B&N Nook | B&N Paperback | Fable | Kobo | Smashwords
Formerly A Different Kind of Fire.
Ruby Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to enroll in art school, leaving behind her childhood home and the beau she always expected to marry. Her life at the Academy seems heavenly at first, but she soon learns that societal norms in the East are as restrictive as those back home in West Texas. Rebelling against the insipid imagery woman are expected to produce, Ruby embraces bohemian life. Her burgeoning sexuality drives her into a life-long love affair with another woman and into the arms of an Italian baron. With the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby's career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could have it all, Ruby, now pregnant and broke, returns to Texas rather than join the queues at the neighborhood soup kitchen. She discovers her life back home is as challenging as that in Philadelphia.
Passion & Paint depicts one woman's battle to balance husband, family, career, and ambition. Torn between her childhood sweetheart, her forbidden passion for another woman, the nobleman she had to marry, and becoming a renowned painter, Ruby's choices mold her in ways she could never have foreseen.
The #1 Amazon Bestseller
Available now in eBook and Paperback!
The eBook was FREE at all retailers from April 7th - July 15th, 2024 to commemorate the hundred days of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. #NeverForget
Amazon Kindle | Amazon Paperback | Apple Books | B&N Nook
B&N Paperback | Kobo | Smashwords
"There’s plenty of sharp, suspenseful action to savor here in this impressively poignant, hauntingly realistic, and searingly moving tale. Schafer intensively explores themes of racism, violence, war, and human welfare. Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis." —Kirkus Reviews
In response to the worldwide epidemic of genocides and to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, Suanne Schafer has issued a second edition of Hunting the Devil, revised and with a new Author’s Note. The electronic edition will be free from April 7 through July 15, 2024, the hundred days the 1994 genocide lasted.
When biracial physician Jessica Hemings volunteers for a medical mission in Rwanda, she becomes entrapped in the maelstrom of Rwandan politics and the enmity between Hutu and Tutsi. Her US passport doesn’t afford the security she’d hoped for as her Tutsi-like features plunge her into horrors of the Rwandan Genocide. Dr. Cyprien Gatera, Jess's superior and a Hutu militant, commandeers her clinic, forces her to treat his wounded, and then slaughters her patients and her adopted sons. She escapes and finds refuge at Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania.
There, beset by grief, hatred, and PTSD, Jess vows revenge. With the help of Michel Fournier, a French lawyer-turned-war-correspondent, and Dr. Tom Powell, her ex-lover, she searches for Gatera who has fled Rwanda to escape post-genocide reprisals. When an unknown informant passes information to Jess about her nemesis, she returns to Rwanda, despite warnings from the Belgian Secret Service that Gatera plans to assassinate her. In their final showdown, Jess must decide if revenge is best served cold or not at all.
Part medical procedural, part global political thriller, part vigilante novel, and part fractured romance, Hunting the Devil moves from the dusty washboard roads of Rwanda to an inner-city hospital in America to the Natural History Museum of Belgium to the halls of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania as it deftly traces one woman’s journey toward justice.
Edited by James Burnham
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: June 6, 2017
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 114
You’ll enjoy other stories by these authors: James Burnham, Diane Byington, Luanne Castle, Victoria Grant, Kristine Mietzner, Linda Moore, Suanne Schafer, Stacey Swann, Robin Taylor, Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, and Kenton Yee.
James Burnham edited this wide variety of well-written short stories from the students and faculty of Stanford University’s on-line creative writing program.
Geminid Press, LLC
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: February 15, 2016
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 330
There’s more too, and in each tale, the characters’ struggles will stretch your imagination and sense of reality, while posing profound questions about morality, society and justice, and raising uncertainties of the unknown and unchecked technological evolution.
With 21 original stories from talented, new authors about extraterrestrials, conspiracies, and space exploration, Night Lights is full of moments that will make you gasp, shudder, laugh, and wonder.
A Note from Suanne: This collection contains my short story, “Suite for the Lady in Red,” which is quite a departure from my usual women’s fiction. An aging impotent spy falls in love with the woman he’s assigned to assassinate—with dramatic and unforeseen results…
House of Erotica
Genres: Short Stories, Gay & Lesbian, Literature & Fiction, Erotica
Release Date: December 3, 2015
Format: eBook
Pages: 90
Edited by Jillian Boyd (Spy Games – Flappers, Jazz and Valentino) Licked is a tribute to the act of oral sex – to the intimacy, trust and the taste of your lover, the scent, the feelings the act invokes in both the giver and receiver. With stories from the likes of Rob Rosen, Jessica Taylor and Dale Cameron Lowry, Licked is a sizzling fictional exploration of some of the many ways oral sex can inspire so much more than just a hot flash of arousal.
Come in. Have a taste.
SEZ Publishing
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: August 17, 2016
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 312
Dark Opus Press
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies
Release Date: August 21, 2013
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 70
Suanne’s short story, “Morrigan,” a retelling of the headless horseman, appeared in this issue, which you can order on Amazon. Also, you can order back issues of this magazine here.
All Who Wander is a fascinating look at the long-term effects of insufficient love, emotional and physical abuse, as well as poor choices in relationships and life in general. Brooke, trapped in a broken family (one that’s missing a mother but has an added stepbrother...
Wisdom Corner is the second in the Virgil Wounded Horse mystery series. Like its predecessor, Winter Counts, it is set on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and picks up where that novel left off. Virgil has become an “enforcer,” administering justice when...
Cleopatra does a remarkable job piecing together the story of a woman from the first century BCE about whom very little is actually known. Schiff pulls together many early sources, extrapolates as many facts as she possibly can, then pieces them into a coherent vision...
I LOVE Elif Shafak’s work and am working my way through her twelve novels. With every read I find a new favorite, but There Are Rivers in the Sky is my all-favorite so far. The book opens in 630 BCE, in Ninevah, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire along the...
As I have been with so many other authors, I am slowly working my way through Ann Patchett’s oeuvre, starting years ago with Bel Canto. Whistler ties with Tom Lake as my—so far—all-time favorites of her works. Tom Lake is a quiet story. Whistler tells of a family...
I have been slowly working my way through Larry McMurtry’s oeuvre. The Berrybender Narratives brings together the four volumes of the epic story of the American West: Sin Killer, The Wandering Hill, Sorrow’s River, and Folly and Glory. In these books, he sets the...
Poison is about the intertwined fates of a Spanish commoner and a queen born on the same day and year. Set in 1692, the bicentennial of Columbus’s discovery of America, it features the worst of Spanish life at the time: the dreaded Inquisition. Spain is now a bankrupt...
Winter Counts is a gritty multi-award winning mystery set on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation and written by an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation. I enjoy both thrillers and Native American novels, so this was right up my alley. The hero (or...
As always, I love books about art, art history, and Italy, so I enjoyed reading The Secret Courtesan. Mia Harding is an art historian sent from the States to certify a fellow art historian’s identification of a statue called “The Estasi” (the Ecstasy) as being by a...
Edge of the Fall is a genre-bending blend of adventure, psychological thriller, and wilderness survival. Dr. Ian Sizemore, dealing with chronic pain and depressed after the deaths of his wife and daughter, is driving in the mountains during a snowstorm when he spies...
The Painter’s Apprentice is set in Venice in 1510. A master gilder sends his daughter, Maria, from home to apprentice under Master Trevisan, a well-known painter. Her father does this for two reasons: to get her away from her illicit lover, Cristiano, (who’s been...
I had so much fun doing a big, beautiful, artsy bookish giveaway haul last month, I've decided to do it again! This time, I'm upping the ante by including a $10 Amazon gift card in one of the prize combos. It's only on for eight days, so enter while you can... Good...
All Who Wander is a fascinating look at the long-term effects of insufficient love, emotional and physical abuse, as well as poor choices in relationships and life in general. Brooke, trapped in a broken family (one that’s missing a mother but has an added stepbrother...
Wisdom Corner is the second in the Virgil Wounded Horse mystery series. Like its predecessor, Winter Counts, it is set on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota and picks up where that novel left off. Virgil has become an “enforcer,” administering justice when...
Cleopatra does a remarkable job piecing together the story of a woman from the first century BCE about whom very little is actually known. Schiff pulls together many early sources, extrapolates as many facts as she possibly can, then pieces them into a coherent vision...
I LOVE Elif Shafak’s work and am working my way through her twelve novels. With every read I find a new favorite, but There Are Rivers in the Sky is my all-favorite so far. The book opens in 630 BCE, in Ninevah, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire along the...
As I have been with so many other authors, I am slowly working my way through Ann Patchett’s oeuvre, starting years ago with Bel Canto. Whistler ties with Tom Lake as my—so far—all-time favorites of her works. Tom Lake is a quiet story. Whistler tells of a family...
I have been slowly working my way through Larry McMurtry’s oeuvre. The Berrybender Narratives brings together the four volumes of the epic story of the American West: Sin Killer, The Wandering Hill, Sorrow’s River, and Folly and Glory. In these books, he sets the...
If you love literature, art, photography, exclusive sneek peaks, author giveaways, and things that light up the soul, you will want to sign up for Suanne's low-volume newsletter...
