Successful Trinidad and Tobago author
With books on Amazon Kindle,
KDP Amazon Print Editions,
Barnes & Noble, and Fishpond.com
H.D. Greaves
Welcomes you!
"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"
Henry Ward Beecher
This website is my bookstore,
and I've tried to make it as inviting as a bookshop window that captures your attention
and invites you in to browse and to buy a book or two.
Currently, I have twenty books on Amazon Kindle, and twenty-one books on Amazon KDP Print editions.
You will also find my books on Barnes & Noble.
For your convenience,
each of the books on my website can be linked to Amazon.
Just press on any book's cover in the scroll on the FEATURED BOOKS page to go to AMAZON
Of Bliss and Granted Wishes
A True Story Told as a Novel
ISBN-13: 978-1500189730
Of Bliss and Granted Wishes is a true story. To avoid retiring to a nursing home, Sam and Sophie Foster remodel their house and ask a family (mother, father, three children, and a dog!) to move in with them.
Filled with humour, rich with compassion, undying love, and a determined refusal to give in to decrepitude and Sam’s loss of memory, their story is proof that, in the words of Ireland’s great poet, Thomas Moore, “the heart that has truly loved never forgets.”
FIVE STAR REVIEWS ON AMAZON
EPIGRAPH
I have known only a few very happy marriages. By that I do not mean just people who get along together and live contentedly through life, but people who really are excitingly happy. These people have somehow preserved the ability to rejuvenate their love so that neither the man nor the woman need wander off to find the romance they long for somewhere else.
Eleanor Roosevelt
February 8, 1944, “My Day”
Poonky Doodles
A Novel of Growth and Survival
ISBN-13: 978-1500219192
Growing up is never easy, but sometimes it can be exceptionally difficult. Set on the Caribbean island of Trinidad during WWII, and in the Pacific Northwest, Poonky Doodles follows the triumphs and tragedies of a young man’s childhood and teen years, as he tries to find out who he is, who and what he wants to become, and why life can be very cruel even when he tries to do all the right things. Written from fact and truth and blood and many tears, this disturbing story is yet rich with humour, friendships, and wisdom, Poonky Doodles is a unique and intriguing coming of age story you will long remember.
. . . .Archie, bring the child back here!”
Dada waving as we barely made it through the tall wrought-iron gates enclosing the front garden.
“Archie, he hasn’t had dinner.”
“We’ll have oysters!” Dada calling from the car.
“Have the coolie wash his hands first.”
“Poonky’s hands?” Dada calling back, knowing full well.
“No, you fool. The coolie’s.”
And we were off on an adventure, Dada with his Poonky Doodles, Dada laughing, smelling of rum and cologne, as I slipped about on the smooth leather seat, loving this man in his crisp white shirt, cricketer’s team tie, cream flannel slacks and white-and-burgundy wingtip shoes.
Dada looked over at me to make sure I was all right. His blue eyes had that twinkle in them, not always from the rum. . . .
The Narrative Voice
Nine Intriguing Short Stories and a Novella
ISBN-13: 978-1500220532
In this unusual collection, H.D. Greaves displays a variety of unique narratives with stories that span the past and the present in locales imaginary and real, embracing humour and irony, intrigue and suspense, and the whole gamut of human affect from sorrow to joy.
Characters range from young to old, including animals, and even — in an amazing story called A Cuckoo’s Lament — the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock, a distinctly adventuresome bird who wants to “fly beyond that Midnight Twelve, to fly beyond Infinity!”
In the novella, The Witch of Tabaquite, you’ll find voodoo, madness, and murder on an island in the Caribbean.
Take the voyage into these stories. You won’t be disappointed.
From Going Barefoot Into Paradise
. . . .On one occasion, a gentleman remarked that Cassi was “strongly curvilinear.”
She later told me that he was a mathematician, “who made love as if jelly-roll was an algebraic formula, though his lacked a definitive conclusion.”
Her affair with “Mister By-The-Numbers” lasted less than a month, and though she needed no cheering up when her algebra lessons ended, when the first bouquet of yellow roses arrived soon after, their vivid colour, intoxicating scent, and above all their mysterious sender, did much to renew her interest in subjects unmathematical.
Dramatis Personae
Poems of Comedy and Tragedy
ISBN-13: 978-1500223328
For M.S.
How easily I take to the warmth of your embrace,
and the depth of caring I see in your eyes lightens my heart
even when you are not standing before me.
After my long road, burdened with disappointments
and empty rooms
you give me refreshment like cool water
filtered through sunlight.
———
Should you be sufficiently adventurous as to purchase this volume of poetry, I thank you. I do not now nor ever have written poetry with the intent of publication, but only for my personal enjoyment, be it cathartic to cleanse tragedy of its bile or whimsical to celebrate a comic vein.
Don Marquis, the poet whose wonderful creations, Archy the Cockroach and Mehitabel the Alley Cat, have given so much pleasure to so many people, wrote
“Publishing a volume of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”
He was right, of course, and still is right, at least when it comes to publishing a volume of poetry the traditional way, that being with the help of a literary agent, an editor, and a publishing company.
However, with the invention of Ebooks and Print-on-Demand, all writers calling themselves poets can now inflict upon the public their work, be it good, grand, insufferably execrable, just plain bad, or (worst cut of all) indifferently mediocre.
The poems you will find in this volume may be in all of those States of Siege, according to your taste and my talent. Written over several decades, and being now an old man, I have long since lost all objectivity about them.
As for why I decided to publish what I never intended to publish: over many years, my friends urged me to do this rash deed and, to please them, as well as curiosity about how my work will be received by strangers (well, badly, or ignored), here it is, to use a fine old cliché, warts and all.
SEVEN PLAYS
ISBN-13: 978-1500329006
Though written for youngsters, these seven plays are suitable for audiences of all ages. All but one have been successfully produced in the U.S. by amateur theatre companies as well as university theatre departments. You will find here simple plays in one act, as well as full-length dramas epic in scope, comedies and melodramas. There is even a short radio play, which offers an illuminating moral, and a whimsical farce to be acted by clowns. These plays are also fun to read, and especially to read out loud.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Translated into English verse by Edward FitzGerald
Preface and brief FitzGerald biography by H.D. Greaves
ISBN-13: 978-1502377661
This KDP/Kindle edition of the Rubáiyát, edited and with a Preface by H.D. Greaves, is unique in that it contains all of the FitzGerald editions: the First, the Second, and the Fifth, as well as FitzGerald’s extensive variations in his Third and Fourth Editions.
You will also find here FitzGerald’s Notes to the Second Edition, his Introduction to the Third Edition, his brilliant essay on Omar Khayyám, and a complete Glossary.
Although FitzGerald’s translation is not literal (he called it a “transmogrification” from the Persian), it is by far the greatest English language version of these extraordinary quatrains.
This high quality CreateSpace paperback and its Kindle ebook companion contain no illustrations. As lovely—and as beloved—as many of those are, it may be wise to consider that Omar Khayyám’s immortal words ultimately need no artist’s palette. Our imagination and discernment are more than enough to give them life.
The KDP Print Edition features a beautiful calligraphic font and a matte finish cover that feels like velvet.
This book is also available in Australia and New Zealand on the excellent Fishpond website.