Hollywood Riptide

A seismic shift in Hollywood's power structure occurred during the 1980s. Gone were the moguls and founding fathers of the motion picture industry -- Jack L. Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Carl Laemmle, Samuel Goldwyn, and Darryl Zanuck.  

The studios were being taken over by technological giants such as Sony and Panasonic, and the new owners turned to lawyers and talent agents to run their newly obtained properties.  

In 1982, an aspiring young screenwriter, Nick Caggiano, moves from the Bronx to Los Angeles, hoping to find work in the industry. At a famous bar and restaurant on the Sunset Strip one night, he encounters a wealthy young woman named Nicole.    

What transpires between them creates a riptide of greed, corruption, and perversion that drags Nick through the underbelly of the Hollywood establishment, upending his life and challenging his moral fabric and his sense of self.

 His motto is simple:  "It's okay if I know it's a lie, as long as my target audience believes the lie and buys the product."   

It's a simple maxim to live by and he has made a lot money.  But one night, standing at the bar at the Smokehouse Restaurant in Burbank, California, he meets Nancy and everything changes.  

A brilliant scientist and mathematician, with the face of a goddess, Nancy challenges everything Joe thinks he believes in.  When Nancy takes it upon herself to right some of society's wrongs, she takes Joe along on the ride of his life and makes him realize what he's been missing in his life.    

Targeted Demographics is Joseph Sciuto's second novel, following the success of HOLLYWOOD RIPTIDE.

   A world of corrupt movie moguls, heartless kidnappers, and innocent girls sold into slavery by their own families.  

When wounded Kentucky-born beauty Nicole Tyler ditches her handlers in Las Vegas and sets out to avenge the death of her best friend, her bloody rampage threatens a powerful network of kidnappers and shady businessmen who will stop at nothing to protect their own interests.  

Bent on toppling their illegal enterprise and determined to save her sister from becoming its latest victim, Nicole has no time for a handsome movie producer and returning soldier, Nick Righetti, whose attentions threaten to distract her from her mission.​    

Author Joseph Sciuto delivers a gripping tale about love, family, and the poetics of revenge, Per Verse Vengeance moves briskly between Las Vegas, Kentucky, Beverly Hills and Hollywood on the trail of a young woman who must decide between getting even and opening her heart.  

   Joe is the successful screenwriter behind a series of blockbuster movies, but his personal life is in shambles. 

He hasn't had a date in over eighteen years, and his relationship with the daughter he raised by himself has gone off the rails. 

 Once a sweet and affectionate child, Sofia's personality changed dramatically in her early teens, and her increasingly explosive, irrational behavior has wreaked havoc on Joe's family back home in the Bronx.  

During a visit with a specialist after experiencing neck pain, Joe meets a Kentucky-born beauty, Jennifer, who is a pediatric oncology nurse, and over lunch, they hit it off. Joe soon learns how affable, charming, intelligent, and compassionate Jennifer is, and quickly moves to make room for her in his life.  For the first time in decades, he can see the possibility of a real romantic relationship, but it's not long before Sofia's behavior begins to interfere with his one chance at love.  

As the relationships between the daughter, the nurse, and Joe intertwine, Joe discovers what it means to be a family and learns just how dark life can be for those whose families are torn apart by illness and loss.

Joseph Sciuto deftly guides his characters to grasp of what's really important shifts from the make-believe world of the movies to the everlasting hope that we can all make a positive difference for those fighting just to live. 

   As the beloved, hard-working general manager of a Major League Baseball team in California, "Baseball Wizard" Joe Ciotola has given his life to the sport but lost too much in the bargain.  

Single, childless, disillusioned about baseball, and swamped with regrets after missing the deaths of both of his parents, the 50-year-old Bronx native quits his job and goes looking for something -- anything -- more satisfying than a life spent juggling rosters, recruiting players, and balancing budgets.  

On his way to Anywhere, U.S.A., he stops in a strange place called Salvation, a forgotten desert town where time seems to stand still and where Old Testament values divide the locals between the Saved and the Damned.  

There, Joe meets Mia, a pitiful creature whose future has been written by the town's leaders, and who can't stay without making the ultimate sacrifice. The choices Joe and Mia make together, and the bonds they create with another woman who emerges from Joe's past, shape their lives forever, revealing the power of connections formed from the ashes of great loss.   

A baseball book wrapped in a domestic drama, Mia teaches us as much about love and family as it does about the imperfect history of America's beautiful game. 

It is late winter, 2020, and Nick has been pulled out of the CIA's Kabul office and sent to Paris for what sounds like a simple assignment. 

Posing as a graduate student at a local polytechnic institute, his task is to build a case against Abdul Haqq, a brilliant engineering student suspected of building bombs for Hezbollah.  

What should be an open-and-shut case soon becomes a tangled mess as Nick finds himself drawn into a friendship with the charismatic young engineer, then falls hard for Abdul's adopted sister, the beautiful but troubled art student with a tragic past, Gabrielle.  

As tensions in his personal life rise against a distant backdrop of geopolitical conflicts in Russian-dominated parts of Ukraine, Nick soon finds himself struggling to balance his passion for Gabrielle and his friendship for Abdul with his growing sense that something is rotten at the highest levels of the American government.  

At the center of a hornet's nest of political malfeasance and unbridled greed is a figure known only as "the professor," an insidious intel boss whose sick ambitions threaten not only Nick and Gabrielle but the entire planet.  

A powerful political novel ripped from the headlines and wrapped in a love story, The Parisian Professor explores the roots of state-sanctioned corruption and the scourge of dictatorship in America and beyond.

Native New Yorker Joe Caggiano moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s with a dream to make it big in the movie business. 

Instead, like millions of young hopefuls, he spent 30 years working in the restaurant business.   

An avid reader with multiple advanced degrees but no instinct for self-promotion, Joe watched his dreams fritter away while others in his circle achieved their goals and, in some cases, made the world a better place. 

Now suddenly unemployed, Joe seems destined to spend the rest of his life on the sidelines, until a chance meeting with a bright young girl turns everything around.   

Thanks to an angel-faced orphan on the run from an abusive foster home, Joe embarks on a path of discovery, happiness, and enlightenment that promises to far outshine any of the Hollywood dreams that originally brought him to the City of Angels.

Who is this mysterious man with a past?

The face seems familiar,. So does his manner. Why are the locals, and one in particular, so entranced by this handsome man with an enigmatic smile? 

A mysterious man with a mysterious past.

Who is Mr. Laurence, and what is his story?