Janelle Meraz Hooper

	Paperback $9.99 USD, Kindle $4.99 USD Amazon Barnes and Noble Bears in the Hibiscus A humorous romance... Janelle Meraz Hooper     Mary Bergstrom, a single mom, has left her twenty-five year marriage and entered the work force for the first time.   Luckily, she has found a job she loves and two good friends who are also starting their lives over. Despite challenges, they haven’t lost their positive, humorous outlook. Mary has a plan to make a success of her new life that includes fiscal stability and excludes men. Not that she has anything against them, she just thinks she can’t afford them. Unlike Mary, her friend, Roxanne, is launching a detailed plan to find Captain Marvelous with a yacht. Ray, another friend, bounces from coffee baristas to business moguls looking for love that’s lasting and real.   Mary’s plans aren’t that grand. All she wants is a Hawaiian vacation so she can relax. Too late, she discovers her ex-brother-in-law, Mark, a park ranger from Montana, will be there at the same time for a conference on state parks. He leaves a note for her at the hotel desk warning her to watch out for bears. He hasn’t seen any, but he thinks there might be Bears in the Hibiscus.   Mark’s interest in her brings complications she isn’t ready for: romance; wealthy, demanding in-laws that she didn’t like the first time she’d married into the family; a jealous and vindictive ex-husband; and a greedy and  crazed ex-sister-in-law who dumps her two daughters to follow a con man into a scheme to get-rich-quick raising emus. Then, when that fails, she takes off with a rich Arab in a silk keffiyah.   Mary can’t deny she may have found true love in Mark, but is it worth it if it means being a part of that family again?   Contact Janelle: JanelleMHooper@comcast.net

	Paperback $15.95 USD, Kindle $7.96 USD Amazon iUniverse Barnes and Noble   Custer and His Naked Ladies   Janelle Meraz Hooper   When her husband unexpectedly dumps her, Glory boards an Oklahoma-bound plane at the Sea-Tac Airport. On her way to the ticket counter, she takes the framed photo of her husband out of her gym bag and dumps it into the nearest trash bin—frame and all. She has wasted too many years on a man who doesn’t want her, and her biological clock is beginning to pound like a powwow drum.   Part Hispanic, part Anglo, and raised on the reservation, Glory hopes that by going back to her roots she’ll discover who she is, but her home is in turmoil. Her greedy stepmother has returned, a group of dysfunctional mobsters wants her mother’s land on the Indian reservation to build a casino, her pastor cousin is kidnapped in Mexico while on a mission, and Glory’s beloved turtles are in an environmental crisis. When the mob tries to kill her, Glory counts herself as being an endangered species!   Her biggest problem of all may be Soap, a sexy Comanche lawyer who wants to do something about that powwow drum pounding in her head…   Sprinkled with Spanish phrases and Comanche words, Custer and His Naked Ladies is full of Southwest flavor.   Although this book stands alone, it is the third book in a Turtle Trilogy, and the characters in the first two books reappear for one last time in Custer and His Naked Ladies. I'm going to miss them.   A fun read! Contact Janelle: www.JanelleMerazHooper.com JanelleMHooper@comcast.net

	Paperback $17.95 USD, Kindle $7.96 USD Amazon iUniverse Barnes & Noble     Winner! 2002 Bold Media Fiction Book Award! First place fiction: 2002 Bold Media Award! A Three-Turtle Summer   Janelle Meraz Hooper   An entertaining book about women who stick together to help one of their own find her place in the world for herself and her daughter…   Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1949…Grace and her five-year-old daughter, Glory, are living through A Three-Turtle Summer—a summer so hot the turtles are dying. It’s also the summer that Grace’s sisters and mother join forces with Grace to help her dump Dwayne, her abusive husband, who her sister Pauline says is “meaner than a rattlesnake and dumber than adobe.”      Besides her Hispanic family, a rich list of characters also assist in her  escape, including: Sako, an American-born Japanese neighbor whose former home was the internment camp at Poston, Arizona; two gay dance instructors; a Negro gospel singer who sells lip-smackin’ Barbecue out of the trunk of her new orange Cadillac convertible; and Rudolf, her older sister’s husband who’s a colonel in the Army.      This women’s fiction story, set in the Southwest, will appeal to women everywhere who are looking for a good story with a happy ending. Published by iUniverse, softcover, 6x9, 323 pages, ISBN # 0-595-24375-4.Fictional autobiography.                  A Three-Turtle Summer is the first novel in the turtle trilogy. The second novel, As Brown As I Want, The Indianhead Diaries, is also available for order and was a finalist in the 2004 Oklahoma Book Awards.                     Purchase Janelle's books from iUniverse at www.iuniverse.com , on her web site, or order from your favorite walk-in bookstore.                                               contact Janelle: janellemhooper@comcast.net

	Paperback $13,95 USD, Kindle $6.00 USD Amazon iUniverse Barnes & Noble   Finalist! 2004 Oklahoma Book Awards   1999 1st place fiction Surrey 2004 Oklahoma Book Award finalist!   As Brown As I Want, The Indianhead Diaries   Janelle Meraz Hooper         The summer of 1952, Lawton, Oklahoma… Eight-year-old Glory has a father who's taken out a $50,000 accidental-death policy on her--now he's spending the summer trying to collect. In his first attempt, he throws Glory to the snakes, but a giant alligator snapping turtle scares the snakes away.        Glory writes in her diary: Well, Powwow Pete drove us home to talk to Mom, but we didn’t get very far. Mom thinks I just have a wild imagination. At least Powwow Pete believes me. I think it was the turtle that killed it for Mom.        “How could there be a turtle that big?” she scoffed. They talked some more and Powwow Pete got kind of mad and got up to leave.        This was one of those times when a kid thinks they’re talking about a turtle, but the grown-ups are really talking about something else entirely. In this case, I think Powwow Pete was accusing Mom of still loving my dad, but he never said that, he just kept talking about the turtle. Mom was doing the same thing: talking about the turtle but meaning that she didn’t want to get messed up with some guy who was a pathologgy liar (Glory can’t spell). As Brown As I Want is the second book in the turtle trilogy. Published by iUniverse, softcover, 6x9, 166 pages, ISBN # 0-595-29408-1.Fictional autobiography. To read sample chapters or purchase Janelle's book, visit her web site: http://JanelleMerazHooper.com A popular young adult book!    contact Janelle: janellemhooper@comcast.net

	Paperback $12.95 USD, Kindle $7.96 USD Amazon iUniverse Barnes & Noble A favorite of teachers! Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories   Janelle Meraz Hooper     What’s a chick story? It’s a story with no drugs, bombs, or spies who have numbers instead of names. And clean. It’s gotta be clean. Spend some time with Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories and its other stories and shorts like Elvis Has Left the Building…and is Living in My Computer, Harpy and Julianne’s War of the Roses, and Gets Tickled and the Fish Trap, and have a smile on me.   I balanced out the short stories with some commentaries so we won’t forget where we’ve been…and how far we have to go.   If you’re looking for the answer to world peace, you probably won’t find it here, but why does everything have to be so serious? Published by iUniverse, softcover, 6x9, 132 pages, ISBN # 0-595-34464-X. Mixed genre.     www.janellemerazhooper.com  Also available on online and instore bookstores contact Janelle: janellemhooper@comcast.net

The Oklahoman, July 6, 2008

	1-24-08The Puyallup Herald, part 1 1-24-08 The Puyallup Herald, part 2

	The Fremont Troll learns to read... Fremont Troll, Fremont, WA Valentine's Day promotion card, 2008

	Happy Halloween, 2007 (© Joyce Stevens, wheelchair witch sculpture)