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One of the biggest excuses for not creating the change we want is that we are convinced we just don't have the time. We're already on overload. How can we possibly fit one more thing in? We're convinced we have not a moment to do those things we have to much less what we yearn to.

But what if that was not true? What if something as simple and ordinary as a egg timer was your secret to better time management?

It Takes An Egg Timer, A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life is part guide and part manifesto. It is inspiring, motivational, informative and entertaining.

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What readers are saying about 
The Secrets They Kept

“Joanne Tombrakos has written a story filled with characters as real and compelling as people we all know. The author has a gift of storytelling that completely absorbs the reader. Reading this novel was like watching a movie on the big screen - you could picture everything down to the very last detail.”  Michela Rabia, Neokosmos Book Review

“Excellent debut novel! …Women—strong women—take center stage in this story, distinguishing it from your run of the mill novel.” Colette Martin, author

“THE SECRETS THEY KEPT has it all, the story of a family, complex main characters whose growth we experience, an ending that answers most of our questions but leaves room for imagination. At times comedic, at times tragic, it is the story of secrets woven so deeply into the fabric of Elena's Greek-American family that they remind us of our own.  I recommend the book to all who read not just for pleasure or to be swept up into a new world, but for self-knowledge.” Susan Russo Anderson, author.

“Anyone who enjoys a good family drama will enjoy this book.” Dees Reading Room

Check out more 5 Star reviews on Amazon! 

Buy The Secrets They Kept  now on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, iBook or other select on-line retailers in print and in e-book!

For Book Clubs ONLY:   Click here to download a PDF with conversations starters for your group's discussion of The Secrets They Kept. 

Every family has its secrets. Elena Poulous knew that. As an attorney she witnessed such deception every day. But she never thought her Greek-American family was like everybody else’s.  She believed she knew everything there was to know about them - until the Saturday morning  the police knock on the door of her New York City apartment. Her otherwise organized and controlled life is suddenly disrupted as they inform her of the death of Yannis Poulous, a man she had never heard of, a man who has listed her as his next of kin.

As Elena sets out to settle his affairs, she encounters a web of secrets that have been silenced for a lifetime.  A box of old letters she unearths in his Brooklyn apartment begin to help unravel the mystery. But the biggest part of the puzzle - why everyone in her family, especially her mother Kristina refuses to talk about him - proves the most difficult to discover.

The story unfolds over the course of the forty days that follow Yannis' death, a time when according to the beliefs of the Greek Orthodox religion, the soul of the deceased remains close to the earth and to those it loves as it asks for the forgiveness of its sins.

The Secrets They Kept is a multi-generational story, of mothers and daughters, of cultural and religious influences that still exercise power, of hearts closing and opening, of secrets kept and discovered, all in the name of love and of family.

Joanne Tombrakos is a writer, business coach and speaker who inspires and creates change. She blogs on living and working after corporate America at http://onewomanseye.blogspot.com. Joanne is a second generation Greek-American.  The Secrets They Kept is her first novel. 




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