Ajuma consists of a memoir and three short stories by Tyler Davis.  Favors for Neighbors is the story of how a volunteer organization by the same name was started.  Tyler returned from teaching overseas with the aim to work as a volunteer for the summer.  The problem was he couldn't find an organization he felt passionate about so he wrote his local paper informing the community that he had started his own, Favors for Neighbors: Hey neighbors:  My high school community service teacher at Winona Senior High, John Ruggeburg, once told us that "doing a little bit of good is better than nothing."  I remembered those words for years, but I can't say I've followed them as much as I should have.  I just returned from overseas and I found myself in Winona for the summer. I have no commitments until August. I wanted to volunteer my time to help others.  The problem is I'm restless.  I don't think I can pick just one kind of service, so I want you to pick for me. You can have my time for a day or 10 minutes, it's up to you.  Is there anything I can help you with?  Do you want someone to do your dishes? Walk your dog? Need a volunteer for a charity or organization? If you provide the ingredients, I'll even cook you a meal. I'm 26 and have a reasonably strong back. I like working outside, but air conditioning is fine too.  I am at your service. The ground rules: I won't accept payment. I'm not doing this for money. I have a list of charities you can donate to if you feel like you want to do something in return. I won't do anything illegal. I will only assist you up to one day.  I'm going for breadth here, not depth. I won't do anything that would make my girlfriend want to cause me bodily harm. She's strong. I've got free time and want to help.  If there's anything I can do for you, you can e-mail me at favorsforneighbors@gmail. I have no idea what kind of response to expect from this, but I'll try to get to as many of you as possible. It will be first come, first served. Please let me know the time, place and what you want me to do. Let me know if I can be of service to you. Ajuma, Only in Dreams, and Expulsion are short stories by the same author.

Ajuma

Literature & Fiction

Tyler, Davis

Dramas & Plays

Gentleman Tree

What does it all mean? What is the good life? What is the value of a good deed? In search of meaning and answers after an aborted suicide attempt, a young man joins the Peace Corps and is sent to the Mongolian desert as an English teacher. In this sometimes dangerous land of rugged, natural beauty, his search for redemption and an alternative to modern American life will either be his salvation or his undoing.

The Soft Exile

Kiefer, Eric

Literary

Mr. Bronze is a self-loathing agoraphobic who writes for the seniors' magazine AARP Goldcoasters. Jonathan Rosenberg is heir to his grandfather's paper plate fortune. Ryan is an Evangelical Christian who believes God has called him to save the soul of Bill Murray. It's a novel about post-modernism, religious zealotry, existentialism, and the absurd. It's about coming to the edge of the abyss and peering in. It's about regeneration through destruction.

Saving Bill Murray

Newett, Joshua Lorenzo

"Thad Gordon’s life had been on a downward trajectory since his family moved from Walpole, Massachusetts to East Hampton, New York. He wanted to slip through the cracks and be forgotten. He listlessly haunted the city, a ghost among the chaos and cacophony, a forgotten boy lurking in the shadows of the greatest show on earth. He sat on stoops, in parks, libraries, coffee shops, alleyways, and subways, observing the great rush of humanity in the streets: beggars, mad men, drug dealers, lovers, friends, dogs, children being pampered by nannies, ants carting off pieces of cinnamon roll, joy, indifference, and hate. The city was a great confluence of stories, millions of people stacked up in great hives buzzing and flitting here and there. Where are they all going? How did they end up in this city? When did their families come to America? When the sun broke through afternoon clouds in heavenly rays, how many noticed? How did they feel? This is the story of one of those people, a story about coming to the edge of the abyss and peering in. "

In Remembrance of Things Lost

Along the Naktong is about something we all feel even if we don't admit it, a deep disconnect with the world that surround us. Post modern man is adrift in a sea of rules, norms, and ideas on what we should, must, or must never do; the proper and the improper, winners and losers, the beautiful and the damned,the saved and the lost, the us and the them. We're born into a world created by others, told who and what we are from the time we take out first breath many never realizing the choices they made were never really choices at all. The characters in this book represent the struggles of the intrepid few who took a fleeting day dream and turned it into a reality, who garnered the courage to turn a feeling of vague dissatisfaction into a quest for meaning. It is a story of consciousness becoming aware of itself, the realization that our existence precedes our essence, a place from which all great journeys must begin.

Along the Naktong