A Listing of My Books
Books by Nancy Cole, (that’s me!), available on Lulu.com as either paperbacks or downloads as of 4 February 2010;
Tips
(Book 1 of the Newly Chronicles)
College is a time of discovery, when students find out just what sort of people they are. This is especially true for Andy Newly, a freshman and part time waiter who embarks on a unique journey of self discovery, one that defies conventions and brings into questions the most basic aspect of his being. It begins as a bet made between student waiters over who makes more tips, males or females. To determine this, they agree to a rather unorthodox experiment. Though feigning reluctance, Andy accepts the challenge of taking on the role of female waitress as part of the bet.
The original purpose is forgotten as Andy finds that his female persona is more than an act, causing him to question his gender identity. His behavior while Amanda, the name he has given his female persona, does not escape the notice of his friends. Along with Andy, they conclude that their experiment is having unintended consequences. Rather than stopping, Andy uses the opportunity to determine who he really is and where he belongs on the gender continuum. In the process he discovers that there is a vast difference between sex and gender. This already bewildering situation becomes even more complicated when a male college student becomes smitten with Amanda.
A Different Kind of Courage
(Book 2 of the Newly Chronicles)
How does a person go about rebuilding a life that they willingly tried to throw away? For Andrew Newly, this journey begins by realizing that to live his life as he was meant to, it will take a different kind of courage.
A Different Kind of Courage is the story of Andy’s efforts to piece together a new life for himself by returning to the college he left after his freshman year and the restaurant where he and a group of friends bought into a crazy bet that changed Andy’s life forever. Together with those friends, he struggles to gather up the frayed threads of his life and begin the daunting task of building a new one for himself, this time as a girl named Amanda.
In this endeavor, Amanda finds that she must not only find a way of dealing with a host of issues and problems that are as confusing to her as they are complex, to include a relationship she’s not prepared to deal with, she must also come to terms with a past that seems to have no place in her new life.
This already difficult journey is complicated by Amanda’s friendship with Tina Anderson, the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur who has accumulated a fair number of enemies who prove to be as much a threat to Amanda as they are to the Andersons, causing Amanda to draw upon a past that she is desperately trying to put behind her.
Inconvenient Truths
(Book 3 of the Newly Chronicles)
Living on the edge with nothing but a safety net weaved from lies to keep you from tumbling headlong into disaster and disgrace is as dangerous as it is demanding. For Amanda Newly, it is an inconvenient fact of life, one she must deal with every day.
Amanda Newly is a rather unique college student. Bright and intelligent, she manages to maintain a GPA of 4.0 in a discipline where most of her fellow students are simply happy to survive. At the Irish Pub where she works on the weekends her proficiency and personality yield tips that are all but unrivaled. Socially she is the glue that holds a diverse group of friends together. To the casual observer, Amanda presents the very image of a young woman who is on the verge of making all her dreams come true. The only thing holding Amanda back from achieving this illusive goal is a past that is totally out of sync with her image as a vibrant young coed, for the girl everyone knows as Amanda started life as Andrew Justine Newly.
In many ways she still is very male, an inconvenient truth Amanda must hide behind a veil of lies from all but a select circle of friends as she struggles to reconcile her past with her future. One aspect of Amanda’s past that threatens to destroy her chances achieving this is not of her own making. Tina Anderson, the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur and one of Amanda’s dearest friends lives under a constant threat of kidnapping, a danger that Amanda once foiled and as a result, leaves her vulnerable to retribution from those seeking to bring harm to the Andersons.
The journey Amanda Newly makes as she treads her way toward a new beginning is one that is as difficult as it is contentious, for Amanda must step outside the accepted norms used to define who and what we are in order to discover not only what is right for her, but to build a new life for herself.
Dance of the Bacchá
At age twenty-six, Jordan Allen Wallace is anything but your typical NYU sophomore. An obsessive focus on his academics, coupled with his status as a veteran and a physical appearance that often cause people who do not know him to mistake him as a female sets him apart from his fellow students. With the exception of his sister Emma, a young professional who possess a sense of humor that is every bit as quirky as Jordan’s, he has no friends to speak of and little in the way of a social life. That begins to change on a Fall Sunday when Emma’s boyfriend Conner, an agent assigned to the FBI’s New York City office, imposes upon her hospitality by bringing along an old college buddy to enjoy an afternoon at Emma’s watching football. Recalling a prank she and Jordan had once played on a high school friend, Emma decides to extract a bit of revenge on Conner by talking Jordan into helping her “even up” the sides.
What starts as a light hearted stunt turns into something serious, deadly serious when Conner seizes upon Jordan’s unique qualities to help him solve a problem that has the Bureau stymied. While Jordan understands the need to cooperate with the FBI by informing on a noted professor at NYU, the role he is required to play presents him with both opportunities and problems that are, to say the least, unusual.
The man the FBI wishes Jordan to inform on is Dr. Wahab Khalje, the son of a former Afghani tribal chief. Khalje, who fought the Soviets with the mujahideen, came to America to study in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal from his country. After earning his doctorate at NYU, Khalje took up teaching there. While Khalje’s strident criticism of American policy in the Middle East caused the Department of Homeland Security to list him as a person of interest, his habit of associating with men suspected of having connections to al Qaeda and the Taliban leads the FBI to fear that he is interested in doing more than simply protesting. Repeated failures to infiltrate Khalje’s tight circle of friends in an effort to discover what, exactly, he is up to leaves the head of New York City’s FBI Counterterrorism Division little choice but resort to methods that are progressively more desperate and unusual. In Jordan, Conner believes he has found a perfect, if somewhat novel solution.
That solution involves an ancient tradition practiced among some of Northern Afghanistan’s ruling elite. Known as bacchá, adolescent Afghani males dress and behave as females in order to entertain their host and master. Like his father, Khalje is fond of the old ways, in particular bacchá baazi, or boy play. It is this weakness that the FBI hopes to exploit using Jordan.
Step by step, Jordan goes from being a last minute stand in for a double date to informer. In the process of adopting a life style that is as foreign as it is repugnant, Jordan finds he must come to terms with his own issues of sexuality and gender. Doing so is difficult as he discovers time and again that he has entered into a world of shadows and lies, a place where neither friend nor lover can be trusted.
No Greater Love
A Novel of World War II
In the late summer of 1939, as France once more drifted into war a mother, anxious to spare her youngest son from it starts him on a journey that does everything but.
Sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Normandy, young John-Paul Tesseraud avoids conscription and French authorities by assuming the identity of his cousin, Pauline Valery. The same attributes that caused his mother to fear for his safety even at the hands of John-Paul’s fellow soldiers allows him to assume his new role with shocking ease. By the time France sues for peace, any thoughts of returning home and his former life are forgotten as John-Paul settles into a new life as Pauline, one better fit for him than the one he left behind.
This is not without it complications when Pauline finds that she has caught the attention of Erich Gerhart, a German soldier who has found something in Pauline that he has not felt for a long time; hope, the hope that even with the specter of defeat looming over Germany, he just might be able to emerge from this war with more than his life. To this end, he pursues Pauline with the determination and single mindedness that had been reserved only for his duties as a sergeant assigned to the signal battalion of a panzer division.
Erich’s interest in Pauline does not go unnoticed by the Resistance. Keenly aware of the value of having someone able to gain access to the information Erich handles, they encourage Pauline to cultivate a relationship with Erich. Fearful of being branded as a collaborator and the discovery of her failure to answer her call to the colors, Pauline gives into Henri’s demands. What starts as an effort to avoid these problems turns into something quite unexpected as Pauline becomes infatuated with someone who is not only the enemy of her country, but ignorant of her past.
As Pauline attempts to carefully tread her way between the competing demands of her duty to her country, her affections for Erich and the need to keep her true nature a secret, the coming Allied invasion of France brings the very war her mother hoped to spare her from to Pauline’s very doorstep.
A Lion in Waiting
As the only son of an English Lord and professional soldier who was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Order in the Great War, Ian Wylie has both a family tradition and reputation to uphold when Britain declares war on Germany in 1939. It is a responsibility he is unable to measure up. This becomes evident when his father’s regiment rejects him because of physical attributes that one officer describes as boarding on being effeminate, making him unacceptable officer material. Undaunted, Lord Wylie manages to secure a posting for his son with the Royal Artillery, one Ian wants no part of but does not have the courage to turn down.
While serving as an observer with a unit covering the retreat of the BEF to Dunkirk in May of 1940, Ian survives a massacre of prisoners taken by a Waffen SS unit. Resolving not to be take prisoner again, yet equally disgusted by the manner in which the BEF was thrown away, Ian is determined to find a way of sitting out the war, safe from both the Germans and his responsibilities.
Ian finds sanctuary for a while on a small farm owned by Andrea Morel, a teacher who was educated in England. Throughout the summer of 1940 the two manage to make due on Andrea’s rations and what the farm can provide. After an incident. While Andrea had managed to arrange Ian’s escape back to England before she died, Ian has no desire to do go. Instead, he assumes the dead woman’s identity and accepts a standing offer made to Andrea to teach at a Catholic’s girls’ school in Normandy.
Ian’s efforts to turn his back on both the war and his family are frustrated by two teenage girls at the school who take it upon themselves to help Jewish children escape the German round up of French Jews. The girls turn to Ian/Andrea because they know she’s been in England and despite her efforts to blend in, Ian/Andrea impresses all her students with her ability to effectively deal with difficult situations calmly and effectively. At first Ian/Andrea refuses to become involved, knowing full well what the consequences for her would be if she was discovered. Only when the girls drag one of the Jewish children they’re hiding into Andrea’s room one night and tells her if she wants to turn the child in, she is free to do so does Andrea agree, but only if the girls do exactly what she tells them. In short order Andrea sets up an effective network that not only aids in the escape of French Jews, but downed Allied airman as well. Eventually this network comes to the attention of the American OSS and British Special Services.
The Germans are not the only threat Andrea and her girls must deal with. Several students at the school have fathers who are officials with the Vichy Government, including one who’s father is an officer with the French Waffen SS unit Charlemagne.
The wheel of Fate makes one last turn for Andrea when she finds herself having to resurrect her training as an artillery observer and assist members of the 82nd Airborne as they struggle to hold out against determined German counterattacks on D-Day, June 6th.