Authors

Doc Ephraim Bates has been writing comedic action thrillers since age fourteen. Growing up the youngest of seven sons, he mastered the three skills most valuable to his characters: maintaining a sense of humor, learning how to take a beating, and the art of not getting caught. Doc’s fast-paced books feature unexpected plot twists and witty dialog. In a world of deception and lies, his characters are famous for their undying friendship and loyalty to each other.

William K. Bennett’s career in the field of electrical engineering has spanned more than 50 years. Since the 1960s, he has worked with organizations like the U.S. Navy, General Electric, Exide, and others. From decades of hands-on experience, he has become an expert on the complexities of industrial battery applications.

Marlene Targ Brill is the author of over seventy award-winning books. She most enjoys writing about children and their accomplishments. Marlene has a bachelor’s degree in special education, a master’s degree in early childhood education, and has worked in the education field as a teacher, consultant, and curriculum specialist. She is also an amateur artist. Marlene and her husband reside near Chicago in Wilmette, Illinois.

Beth Finke is an award-winning author, teacher, journalist, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She also happens to be blind. Beth’s Seeing Eye dog, Whitney, leads her through airports and hotels to events all over North America to speak on memoir writing, disability, workplace accessibility, and overcoming adversity.

Michael Garland is a best-selling author and illustrator of children’s picture books. He has illustrated for celebrity authors like James Patterson and Gloria Estefan on their best-selling children’s books. He is both author and illustrator of thirty-nine children’s picture books and illustrator for more than forty books by other authors.

Marty Grosz was born in Berlin in 1930 and came to the United States at age three. Considered among the best acoustic jazz guitarists of the twentieth century, he lives and performs in Philadelphia. Marty has performed with jazz greats such as Herb Ellis, Charlie Byrd, Ruby Braff, Dick Hyman, Leroy “Slam” Stewart, Bob Haggart, George Duvivier, Bob Wilbur, and Kenny Davern and played everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the White House.

Jane Hertenstein is a prolific author of fiction and creative non-fiction for adults and children. She enjoys long-distance bike touring, waking up early to work, running along the lakefront, and working with the homeless on the streets of Chicago. Her latest book, Cloud of Witnesses, is based on her experiences substitute teaching in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southern Ohio.

Sharon Rosenblatt Kramer grew up in Chicago. But she has also lived in Los Angeles, New York, Albuquerque, and Minneapolis. Sharon has always been a teacher of some kind, her students ranging from 3rd and 5th graders to attorneys and ex-convicts. Now retired, she keeps busy with memoir writing, photography, urban sketching, and enjoying her grandchildren.

Loren Marsters + Gus Koernig are thriller writers from Mesa, Arizona. They became a writing team in 2013 when Loren sent Gus 28 pages of a spy novel he’d been trying to write for the last thirty years. That quickly turned into a labor of love (and occasional head-butting) they both call the most fun they’ve ever had writing.

Gerry T. Pandaleon, CPA, CMA, brings three decades of experience as a CPA, controller, and CFO to her user-friendly guides to buying and selling businesses. Her no-nonsense, arm-around-your-shoulder style helps readers add more value to their businesses, avoid costly mistakes, and reduce stress in the buy-sell process. A natural teacher, Gerry has served as adjunct professor at several universities. She and her attorney husband live in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Joan Goldstein Parker grew up in New York City, where the question, “Where are you going for Seder?” was always answered the same way: at her home, where three or four generations of extended family read the Haggadah and shared the meal together each year. Joan has been in the publishing industry all of her working life. After holding executive positions in several multinational firms, she founded her own literary agency. She and her husband live in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Anna Nessy Perlberg was born in Prague in the late 1920s. She and her family escaped to New York just a few days after the Nazi invasion in 1939. She held a BA in History from Barnard, an MA in History from Columbia University, and an MSW from the University of Illinois. Anna felt a connection with today’s immigrant children and often spoke about her story to school groups. She and her late husband, the poet Mark Perlberg, settled in Chicago, where she lived until she passed away in 2017.

Fr Gabriel Cooper Rochelle, MA, ThM, MDiv, PhD, is an Orthodox priest in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He has been a cleric for over 50 years and enjoys birding, baking bread, bicycling, and calligraphy in his spare time. Giving readers the benefit of his half-century in ministry, he writes on many subjects, with Celtic Christian spirituality being one of his favorite topics. Fr Gabriel resides with his wife in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Dick Simpson is a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former Chicago alderman. An expert on Chicago politics and elections in general, he has written and co-authored a number of books and affected public policy. Simpson was an early proponent of civil rights (he joined his first demonstration in 1960) and has devoted much of his energy to advancing the cause of participatory politics. He resides in Chicago, where he continues to oppose the power of the political machine.

Eliza C. Walton worked at Rolling Stone Magazine after college, kicking around Manhattan in a state of nervous unrest until meeting her husband and moving to a small farm on the coast of Maine. Before she received her MFA in fiction, Eliza took time out from writing to raise three children among sheep, chickens, ponies and donkeys. She and her husband live in beautiful Newcastle, Maine, where she writes and bakes bread every day.

Deanie Yasner is a children’s book author of extraordinary depth and sensitivity. She draws inspiration from her early years as a member of the only Jewish family in a small Mississippi town in Jim Crow south. After a successful career as a special education teacher and behavior consultant, Deanie began pouring the insights she gained into stories for children. She and her husband enjoy long walks along the Delaware River Canal Trails near their home in historic New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Books you’ll want to read, written by people you’ll want to meet.

Books you’ll want to read,
written by people you’ll want to meet.