The Immaculate Series 

Book I: A Town Called Immaculate

Amazon links: Kindle Edition $8.05 | Paperback $11.66 |  Hardcover $22.76

Still traumatized by his time in Vietnam, Ray Marak’s world has shrunk—to the boundaries of his small hometown of Immaculate, and the warmth of his adored family: his young sons Jacob and Ethan, and his wife Renee—the woman who waited for him during his wartime hell. But as the snow accumulates, so do the townspeople’s stories, and the suspicions Ray has harbored for years start to resurface, along with his demons. As midnight approaches, and young Jacob vanishes into the deadly storm, Ray realizes that Josh’s generosity has been motivated by something more than neighborly kindness. Snow, it seems, can bury everything but the past; hour by hour, as Christmas Day approaches, Ray Marak begins to lose control. This haunting novel explores family and fidelity, and the fragility of the things we take for granted.

‘With its terse emotions, rural dysfunction and sharply comic moments, this suspenseful debut shares midwestern ambience and territory with the Coen brothers’ Fargo. An array of strong characters gives a bright, nervy edge to Anthony’s fresh prose.’ – James Urquhart, Financial Times

‘Anthony is utterly convincing with his unassuming manner and Immaculate is quietly riveting.  It is a novel born to make one think.’ – Doodled Books

Read more Reviews and Excerpts.

Book II: The Plenty

Ten years earlier, in A Town Called Immaculate, Ray Marak learned a hard truth about his family, during a blizzard that nearly claimed his son, Jacob, and his banker, Josh Werther.

The Immaculate series resumes in 1992, on a cataclysmic autumn night when the Marak and Werther families clash again over faith, farming, and family ties. Ray Marak, no longer bankrupt but thriving, concerns himself with succession of the farm, intending to divide it between sons Jacob and Ethan. But a feud begins during the harvest, when the boys’ interests collide over a girl named Tara.

As the Werther children prepare for Halloween, Renee Marak attempts to hold the center of both families, until Ethan makes an announcement that triggers tragic events that will alter the shape of both the Maraks and the Werthers forever.
A brothers feud begins when Ethan returns from college and learns that Jacob, running wild in Immaculate during his senior year of high school, has attempted to seduce his girlfriend. Ethan has his own announcement to make that will trigger events that shake both families.

Sample chapters:

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

Accelerating Returns

Kindle Edition: $2.99 | Paperback: $13.99

Accelerating Returns is a novel about science, progress, and the war for public opinion. Rogue extremists known as Blockers perform acts of terror to create spectacles of worst-case-scenario science to spur the masses to action. A young, inspiring CEO takes her biotech firm from zero to empire, only to be undermined by a ruthless executive with his own anti-science agenda. A disgruntled researcher sees his work usurped by a charismatic scientist and is recruited by the neo-Luddites. Blockers are not street thugs throwing rocks. They are scientists and executives in research labs and board rooms whose single purpose is to deter the inevitable integration of man and machine.

Rule #7 of Blocker’s Manifesto: A Blocker does not operate underground. He participates in a group. He is mainstream. All things anathema to him, he must embrace and make central to his life.

Inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, and Hugo de Garis’ The Coming Artilect War.  The Law of Accelerating Returns states that technology in the coming century will be so “rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” On one side will stand those who welcome radical advancement in technology, versus those on the other side who attempt to subvert and destroy it. This story is the beginning of the coming struggle.

Sample chapters:

Chapter 1. Respirocytes – 2008
Chapter 2. Pelius Research
Chapter 3. Talbot Labs – 2016
Chapter 4. KillJoy’s Manifesto
Chapter 5. Hatter House

Drill & Sanctimony

Now available, a comedy called Drill & Sanctimony.

Kindle Edition $0.99 | Paperback $9.99

Paul Sprungli. Overweight. Opinionated. Obsessed with video games and war movies. In U.S. Army basic training, he connives, eats, and bumbles through ten weeks, running a contraband market, exploring religions, and facing military justice from the diminutive Drill Sergeant Pint. Bunking with Sprungli is an exemplary soldier who succumbs to the most trying element of the modern U.S. Army’s co-ed training environment: falling in love. Sprungli becomes the courier of notes, until he learns to doctor the messages and bring Drill Sergeant Pint into a fraternizing love triangle. A military comedy for the 21st century.

Drill & Sanctimony is a tale of excess.  Paul Sprungli is oozing from all sides.  He teems with expectations fostered by movies and video games.  He lives with a sense of unwarranted entitlement.   He expects an Army experience like he has seen in the movies, particularly Full Metal Jacket, but he is unaware of the Army’s co-ed training environment, and finds that none of the Hollywood expectations are met when he arrives.  His appetites dominate him, and his delusions create repeated collisions with authority.

Sample chapters:

Airport – Missouri – Breakfast – Fat Camp