Books by Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Memoir · Available now

Neglected But Undefeated: The Life of a Boy Who Never Knew a Mother’s Love

This book is surprising, dramatic, unbelievable, heartbreaking expressions said and done. One young man going through trials and tribulations, feeling unloved, unwanted, never needed, and unexpected, from a lady that he had finally understood was his true mother. The one he was told loved him the most in the world no matter what she does and says to him. Growing up and feeling like there was and cannot be any future and purpose for him because he felt and was being told that he could die and day to come. For reasons of that he couldn’t control his feelings and seizures that were occurring because of the hatred he felt towards him from the one that loved him the most in this world.

Book 1 · Available now

Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable

It is said that being friends before lovers is a key to a wonderful relationship. When couples are friends first, even when there is no physical loving, there is still caring and communication. Claude and Kelly are friends. The question is do they have what it takes to successfully transition into lovers while keeping their friendship intact for the long haul.In Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable, high school senior Claude Daniels faces some of the most horrific tragedies life can throw at a person, and his best friend Kelly helps see him through them all. As they move toward adulthood the pair is exploring the possibilities of their relationship and will soon discover if friendship really is the best foundation or if it does more harm than good.Autobiographer Jonathan Anthony Burkett is back and determined to keep readers up all night with his first work of fiction Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable. Inspired by his personal experiences, Jonathan has crafted a story of the heart to address several crucial relationships issues of our day.Does support always equate to love? What has to happen for truth to rule over the emotions of a relationship? Can anything kill a friendship? Find out if Claude and Kelly can answer these and many others questions in Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable.

Book 2 · Available now

Friends 2 Lovers: Closed Doors Open

In the heartwarming follow-up to Friends 2 Lovers, readers can look forward to childhood friends Claude and Kelly s new encounters and their ebb and flow of emotions as they begin life together as a couple. Friends 2 Lovers Part 2 gives fans of the first book a new twist to look forward to as closed doors begin to open and unbelievable things happen. The novel begins as Claude and Kelly bid their goodbyes to old acquaintances and very close friends. After spending a year in New Jersey, they start their journey back down to Miami, Florida to be close to their families. They encounter many new things and strive to keep their bond strong and unbreakable. However, past relationships and misunderstandings catch up with them, threatening the special connection they already have together. In addition, a more haunting past troubles them, risking both their lives and loves. Blending suspense, murder, revenge, love, lust, Friends 2 Lovers Part 2 is a compelling and emotive read that will still leave readers overwhelmed, hanging, and asking for more.

Book 3 · Available now

Friends 2 Lovers: Unexpected Consequences

The third chapter of Friends 2 Lovers focuses on new adversities that the pair must face as they move forward in their new relationship. Crises from all angles of life present themselves to Claude and Kelly, testing their resolve to remain true to each other while the world around them becomes more and more perilous. Violent actions enter the love affair several times throughout the novel, forcing Claude and Kelly to protect themselves and their relationship from those who wish to bring harm to them. Medical issues also come into play when the couple learns that their close friend is in need of a life-saving transfusion. With difficult choices to make and lives at stake, the couple must find strength within their relationship to make it through.

Book 4 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: Hidden in Plain Sight

One year after Kelly Richards gave up the baby born from the worst days of her life, she marks the little girl’s first birthday the only way she can: one cupcake, one candle, and a prayer whispered in the laundry room. Then the mail comes. Inside a plain white envelope is a photograph of a laughing one-year-old in a pink party hat, and on the back, four words in careful block capitals: "Happy 1st Birthday to OUR daughter."

Larry Vance is out on bail, and five months from trial. He knows where the child is. He knows exactly how to reach Claude. One quiet remark in a courthouse hallway is all it takes for Claude’s temper to hand Larry everything he wants, and when Claude’s fist goes through a wall in front of their daughter, Kelly gives him a choice: learn to control his rage at Uncle Dev’s boxing gym, or don’t come home. There, beside fast-talking heavyweight Clinton Johnson, Claude stumbles onto a secret that could change everything, and he decides to keep it.

Anthony owes a dangerous man a favor that has come due, a film director offers Kelly the role she gave up on and the people closest to them are hiding more than anyone knows. This family has survived everything. Can it survive the secrets they keep to protect each other?

• “Anybody can hit. A champion decides.” Uncle Dev
• “We don’t keep score anymore. We keep each other.” Claude
• “Fighting is when you can’t stop. Boxing is when you know how to.” Claude
• “I don’t care what I come from. I care where my kids come from. They come from me. So I got to be somebody they can come from.” Claude

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Book 5 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: The Ones We Chose

On the night of Anthony and Myra’s wedding, under a sky of silver stars, Kelly opens the envelope she has kept hidden in her Bible for months. The test proves Larry Vance is not the father of the daughter she placed for adoption. And if it was never Larry, there is only one other man it could be. The little girl with the mark on the back of her neck, the one who ran across the dance floor straight into Claude’s arms, may be his.

Claude wants to bring her home. Kelly wants something harder: no hiding, no fists, no lawyers first. She owes Valerie Dixon, the woman who opened her door and raised Lori with love, the truth face to face. But Valerie’s husband, Reggie, greets kindness with a careful plan of his own, and Clinton Johnson, Claude’s sparring partner and Lori’s devoted big brother, is not about to let anyone take his sister without a fight. Anthony, ignoring his own failing health, offers his son a lawyer who only plays to win. And from a prison cell, Larry is still looking for ways to hurt them.

Two families love the same little girl. Both have every reason to hold on. When the law, blood and love all point in different directions, who gets to decide what makes a family?

• “That’s all a father ever is. The one who stays.” Anthony
• “A kid can have more than one person decide they love her.” Clinton
• “Every time this family hides something, somebody gets hurt worse than the thing we were hiding.” Kelly
• “Tell the truth first and fight second. If I have to fight at all.” Kelly

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Book 6 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: The Sins of the Father

On Father’s Day, Claude Richards holds a yellow envelope from Detroit and learns that the man who raised him since he was seventeen was never his father by blood. Anthony Richards paid for a lie in 2008 so he could bring Claude home. Now, with a kidney transplant scheduled for dawn, Claude has one night to decide what he owes the man who chose him, and his wife, Kelly, has to decide how close to stand while he carries it.

The secret does not stay in the study. Myra, Anthony’s wife of less than a year, learns that the safe she was trusted to open held the one thing she was never told. Latoya’s Sunday table goes quiet. Detective Arnold, who signed the paper he was handed, wants answers of his own. And a podcast host named Vanessa Cole is asking questions about a doctor in Detroit and a test he never should have changed.

If the truth comes out, it reaches past Claude and Kelly to Daisy, to CJ, and to a little girl in Miami Gardens, and to a man in a Georgia prison who once spared Kelly’s life for a reason that is no longer true. In The Sins of the Father, a family built on love has to ask what a name is worth, and who will pay for the one that was bought.

• “Some families keep their secrets in the ground.”
• “The lie isn’t the end of the man. What he does next is.” Colin
• “No hiding inside this family. Privacy outside it.” Kelly
• “I’m angry. That’s different. I can work angry.” Kelly

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Book 7 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: A Seat at the Table

A year after the operating room, Claude and Kelly Richards are expecting their third child and learning to live with the truth about the man who raised Claude. Then an invitation arrives that Anthony cannot refuse: Father’s Day dinner on Key Biscayne, at the home of the silver-haired man the family knows only as Papa, the man whose favors once brought Kelly home alive.

The table is beautiful. The booster seats are already set out. Little Lori runs straight to the old man with her arms up, and Valerie Dixon realizes her daughter has been here before. Reggie will not look at Julian, the grandson who quietly sets every chair. And in a library at the end of a long hall, Anthony is told that the debt is paid, and given advice that sounds a great deal like an order: when the grand jury asks who this man is, he is to say what he always has. He does not know.

But Anthony promised his family no more lies, and a federal subpoena is coming. With Claude standing beside him, Kelly guarding the children, and Clinton preparing for a rematch the whole city is watching, the Richards family has to decide what honesty will cost. In A Seat at the Table, how do you tell the truth about a man who has never told anyone his name?

• “Whatever you decide, you don’t decide it alone.” Claude
• “A table with more people at it than chairs.”
• “Our family says everybody’s name.” Daisy
• “That man doesn’t make threats. He makes weather.” Detective Arnold

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Book 8 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: Flesh and Blood

It is Father’s Day, and an old man on a silver-headed cane has just laid a faded photograph on Anthony Richards’s tablecloth and called him son. The powerful man Anthony testified against before a federal grand jury is the father who watched him from across the street for fifty-six years, and now Claude and Kelly Richards have to hold their family together while the ground shifts under all of them.

Within days there is an arrest at dawn, a courtroom list with Anthony’s name on it, and a new word at every table: brother. Reggie Dixon, the man raising Kelly’s birth daughter, Lori, is suddenly Anthony’s family by blood. In the Bronx, Marcus Greer opens a letter from the father he has never known and has to decide whether to pick up the phone. Claude, who knows what it means to be claimed by a man who was never required to, parks across the street and waits. And Kelly does what she always does when the truth gets expensive. She counts every name at the table, twice.

But some debts are older than anyone at that table, and loyalty runs in more than one direction. When blood and paper say different things, which one decides who is family?

• “We came the long way, though. That’s the only way that counts.” Claude
• “You don’t count the ones who said they would. You count the ones who came.”
• “A man could sit beside you at a table and still be across the street.”
• “You’re not useless. You’re waiting. It’s a different job.”

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Book 9 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: The Whole Truth

Flesh and Blood ended on Father’s Day with a mask coming off. The quiet housekeeper who served Anthony Richards snapper on Key Biscayne, who stood behind every chair in the old man’s house for fifty-three years, is Doreen, the mother he was told had died when he was three. She is alive, and she is sitting at his table.

Doreen will tell her story once, from the beginning, in her own order, and not one word sooner. So in a summer when nobody can come close, Claude and Kelly Richards learn to wait beside a man who has been waiting his whole life. Kelly, who counts every name in this family twice, realizes she never once counted the woman under the banyan tree, and writes her name at the top of the page. Reggie Dixon has to reckon with the woman who raised half of him in his mother’s kitchen. Marcus finds out he has his grandmother’s hands. And while the government keeps building its case, dangerous men are growing curious about anyone who heard what was said at that dinner table.

How much of a mother’s story is a son owed, and what will it cost Claude and Kelly’s family to hear the rest?

• “Every one of us is sitting here. That’s the whole score.” Doreen
• “You can tell me anything, baby. I may not answer it.” Doreen
• “I loved you on your own account. You hear me? Not for anybody else’s. Don’t you let anybody take that from you.” Doreen
• “Then you know some columns don’t total. You just draw the line under them and write what’s there.” Doreen

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Book 10 · Coming soon

Friends 2 Lovers: In This One Life

On Father’s Day, at a long white table in the Miami sun, the family learns who has been mailing secrets to the federal government for twelve years. The answer reaches back to a kitchen telephone in 2008, and to the night Claude Daniels lost his family in Detroit. Claude and Kelly have built a marriage, three children, and a foundation out of everything that tried to break them. Now Claude carries a sealed envelope in the inside pocket of his navy jacket, a letter from the man who ruled Anthony’s world, and he has not yet found the courage to open it.

A trial is three weeks away. The defense wants the source named and every envelope thrown out. Men tied to the old empire have already stood outside Julian Dixon’s gate. Detective Arnold and Latoya refuse to leave Doreen’s side, Reggie is learning things about his own mother at sixty-three, and Agent Dana Whitlock finally gets invited to the table.

In In This One Life, the final book of the Friends 2 Lovers series, Kelly holds Claude to the rule she made for this family: no more safes. Whatever that letter holds, they will face it side by side. But when the truth finally comes out of that pocket, can the love that began on a Detroit schoolyard carry the weight of everything it says?

• “Friends to lovers. That’s what we thought the whole story was. Like that was the end.” Kelly
• “I don’t know. I hope. That’s different.” Doreen
• “Nobody freed me. I walked out of that house on my own two feet, and I’ve been walking since.” Kelly
• “You were always sitting right there.” Claude

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Novel · Available now

Fighting To Become Champions

Devin and Clinton both discovered the world of boxing at a young age, but each through his own different way. Devin s father, an aspiring boxer himself, never made it to the ring and instead began to train his son as his protégé. Clinton came from a broken home, filled with neglect and anger. Left to fend for himself as soon as he turned 18, Clinton harnessed the anger that he had learned to live with, turning it into an asset in the ring. The contrast between Devin and Clinton s roads to becoming boxers shows us the power of emotion and how both good and bad emotion can be harnessed, says Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Author of Fighting to Become Champions. For these two characters, inspiration and anger give them each the motivation to succeed. After becoming friends and living under the same roof when Clinton needed shelter, the two boys bond over the sport that they both become interested in. Soon, fighting together in the streets after school becomes a pastime for the boys, as well as an arena to show off their skills. But, when Devin s sister Jennifer takes an interest in Clinton and the two fall deeply in love, the friendship between the two boys takes a turn for the worst. While Clinton and Jennifer seek to express their love, Devin sees it as a betrayal, causing a rift between the two former friends. Despite going their separate ways in pursuit of a boxing career, the two will soon come face to face in the ring, where their animosity erupts into an all out fight.

Nonfiction · Coming soon

Abuse and Betrayal

So many of us have lived through it. The hand that was supposed to protect us. The words that cut deeper than any blow. The partner, parent, friend, or leader who smiled in public and broke us in private. And so many of us hide it, telling no one, doubting ourselves, asking whether it was really that bad, knowing deep down that none of it was fair.

In Abuse and Betrayal, Jonathan Anthony Burkett speaks plainly about the wounds that leave no visible mark and the ones that do. He names the many forms abuse takes, from physical and sexual to emotional, financial, and spiritual, and the betrayals that come from family, love, friends, church, and work. He writes about why we stay silent, why men rarely speak, and how childhood pain follows us into adulthood.

Then he shows what abuse and betrayal do to the heart, the mind, and the body, and how so many people find their way through: telling someone, getting help, staying safe, rebuilding trust, and learning to love again. Healing does not mean forgetting. It is an unforgettable memory. But a scar is not a wound, and a survivor can become someone who lives.

If you are in danger, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is reachable by call or text at 988.

• “The responsibility belongs to the person who did the harm. Always.”
• “Abuse is not always loud. Sometimes it is a slammed door. Sometimes it is a closed one.”
• “Most secrets are not kept with locks. They are kept with smiles.”
• “It was that bad, because it happened to you, and you deserved better.”

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Books to live by · Coming soon

One Life

We are given one life. Not a rehearsal, not a draft we can tear up and start again. One. And somewhere along the way, most of us discover that this one life is heavier than anyone warned us.

In One Life, Jonathan Anthony Burkett sits down with the reader for the kind of honest conversation most people only have at two in the morning. He takes on racism and jealousy, broken promises and neglected love, the bodies that fail us and the faith that wavers. He asks the questions we carry for years: Why do we play mind games? Why are we so afraid of love? Why are we not proud of who we are until someone else says it? Will there ever be peace between cultures, colors, religions, nations, and between man and woman, or are we really fighting for power?

Along the way he travels to Ile-Ife, the ancient Yoruba city called the cradle of humanity, to find lessons in its art, its heroes, and a faith that survived chains.

Across 51 chapters, One Life moves from pain to purpose: self-awareness, resilience, forgiveness, boundaries, gratitude, rest, and the daily habits that grow a better heart, soul, mind, and spirit. The weight is real. So is the strength to carry it.

• “The heart beating in your chest is not warming up for something else.”
• “Grief is, in a sense, love with nowhere to go, and as long as the love remains, some grief often remains with it.”
• “A broken vow does more harm than an honest silence.”
• “Almost every mind game is a need in disguise.”

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Books to live by · Coming soon

Everything Changes

Every season of Jonathan Anthony Burkett’s life ended without asking him first. A happy childhood with his grandparents in Jamaica gave way, at about six, to a house in the States where he felt unwanted. Seizures arrived at fourteen. So did nights in cars and parks. Then came brain surgery on January 30, 2006, and a second chance he almost did not want.

In Everything Changes, Jonathan tells that story honestly and turns it into a guide for anyone whose ground is moving: a move, a loss, a diagnosis, a breakup, a job gone, a version of yourself you have outgrown. He writes about why we cling to familiar pain, how to grieve the life that is ending, what forgiveness changes first, and the small daily choices that turn change from something that happens to you into something that grows you.

Inspired by his song "Changes," this is a book for every person standing between who they were and who they are becoming. You are not who you were. That is the good news.

• “You were not only made to survive the storm. You were made to grow something after it.”
• “You did not choose the weather. You still get to choose how you walk through it. And no storm, no matter how long it lasts, gets the final word on who you become.”
• “Whatever season you are in right now, it is not the last one.”
• “A storm can knock down a tree, or it can teach the tree to grow deeper roots.”

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Books to live by · Coming soon

Don’t Give Up

Jonathan Anthony Burkett had every reason to quit. He was told, in words and in silence, that he had no future. At fourteen he was sleeping in cars and parks, fighting seizures. When he went into brain surgery on January 30, 2006, he was not sure he wanted to wake up. A hospital worker named Marise supported him, and when he woke up, he made a decision that changed everything: he would not give up.

Don’t Give Up is that decision, opened up for anyone who is holding on by a thread. Jonathan writes about the thoughts that say quit and what to do when they get loud, the one person who can be enough, faith on the days you cannot feel it, starting over without shame, and the long middle where nobody is clapping. From a boy no one expected to make it to an author, music artist and entrepreneur, his life is proof that the chapter you are in is not the whole book.

Inspired by his song "Don’t Give Up," this book ends with a letter to the reader who needs it most, and a list of places to find help right now.

If you are struggling, you do not have to wait. In the US, call or text 988 any time to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are in danger, call 911.

• “Stay because your story is not finished, and the chapter you are in is not the whole book.”
• “Every breath you take is proof that the story is still being written. Every morning you wake up is a new page you did not have yesterday.”
• “What hope did was keep me from staying down. Every time I fell, the decision I had made was still there, waiting for me to pick it back up.”
• “A breath is the smallest unit of staying alive.”

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Books to live by · Coming soon

Born To Make It

Nobody handed Jonathan Anthony Burkett a blueprint. No diploma, no money, no safety net, and a childhood that told him he would never amount to anything. He lost a job to his own mistakes and chose to keep building anyway. Today his work includes books, songs, Upstormed Records and Upstormed LLC.

In Born To Make It, Jonathan shares what it really takes to rise from a hard beginning: believing in yourself before anyone else does, starting with what you have, learning on your own, setting goals and taking numbers, earning money without losing your soul, building many streams around one vision, and celebrating your wins without forgetting who helped you. It is honest about mistakes, practical about money and discipline, and clear about what "making it" means when it is done right.

Inspired by his album and song "Born To Make It," this book is for every dreamer who was counted out. You were not born to just survive.

• “You were not born to just get by. You were born to make it. Let’s start building.”
• “The odds describe the ground. They do not describe the building.”
• “Your past is a reason. It is not a verdict.”
• “Your beginning explains you. It does not define you.”

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Books to live by · Coming soon

Two Steps Ahead

Jonathan Anthony Burkett learned to survive by staying alert, and he learned to build by taking one small step after another. After a childhood that taught him to read every room, seizures that slowed him down, and brain surgery that changed his life, he found that progress is progress, no matter how small.

In Two Steps Ahead, Jonathan shows how to keep moving when big leaps are impossible, and how to think ahead so life does not keep catching you off guard. He writes about taking the first step, setbacks that are part of the path, knowing your patterns, protecting your name, thinking ahead with your money, your health and your anger, setting goals you can actually reach, and walking with God and good people one day at a time.

Inspired by his song "Two Steps," this book is for anyone who feels behind. Keep walking. You are further along than you think.

• “Two steps forward, one step back is still forward. Keep walking.”
• “The long game is not won by the fastest. It is won by the ones who keep walking.”
• “Walking says, I may not get there today, but I am not standing still. Walking is what you do when you have decided to arrive no matter how long it takes.”
• “Keep stepping, even when the steps are small. And think ahead, so that your steps are taking you somewhere instead of just keeping you busy.”

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