October Moon

Trumpet player Jeffrey Lewis Dean visits Israel on tour with his jazz band during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. His tour guide is the beautiful of Aviva Darr, who is there to guide and, unbeknownst to them, protect, the band.

As they tour Israel, the known terrorist Jialdi is terrorizing the country through bombings while evading the military no matter how hard they try to stop him.

As tensions rise, Jeffrey gets entangled in a situation beyond his control, while falling in love with the woman who could save him in more ways than one.

No Borders for Truth

Two disparate souls, a young Iranian woman with a promising nursing career, and an American collegiate athlete seeking a career in the intelligence field, meet by happenstance. Realizing their mutual passion to serve others, the two connect intellectually and romantically, not knowing they are both connected to secrets that will force their worlds to collide and reveal truths unknown to not only both of them, but also the world. 

No Borders for Truth explores love and loss within family and country, and the richness of the great people of the enduring nations of Iran and America. Through the characters of Richard Holmes and Shideh Ghasemi, the reader peers through a window of real people sharing human commonalities despite culture differences, transcending current stereotypes and biased cultural assumptions. 

Love and War on the Mustang Ranch

Todd Stauder was riding through the Wyoming Territory, just minding his own, when he came across a small ranch. He simply asked for a meal and something warm to drink. Dyani Auster was there with her grandfather. Todd could see she was strong, independent, and a hard-working woman. Not only was she that but she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She caught his eye from the moment he saw her. Trouble came that morning. He would have minded his own, but when a man speaks about a woman like he had heard, he just couldn’t let that slide. Todd would need all his skills and resources to survive this time. He was fast with a gun and had a name because of it, but that only made matters worse. He faced the most dangerous enemy he had ever faced before. He was outnumbered and outgunned, his past had caught up with him and new enemies were closing around him. He would not run; he could not run. Todd had killed his first man when just a boy, then he rode with the Texas Rangers back home. He survived a bloody range war and survived bringing gold down from the Rockies all in his youth. He had fought outlaws, gunmen, and greedy land barons before; but none of that was compared to what he faced next. How would he make it out alive this time?

Leavenworth City

Leavenworth City is a novel that will take you on a journey back though time. Its captivating history told through a fictional character from 1854 to 1861 will have you glued to the pages. This is an adventure you will not be able to forget after you read the journal entries taking you back into the 19th century. Stories with historical figures and other unmentionables telling their antics weave a gripping tale that will leave the reader wanting to learn more about this era in time.

Kat's Dilemma

Kat’s Dilemma is a work of fiction. Created out of bits and pieces of research into the social and cultural challenges encountered by women and men in America at the turn of last century. Only two of the characters are based on real life people in the history of my family. Katherine Gehm was my great grandmother. Some of the known family incidents and resulting emotions are reflected in the character Kat.

Johann Wuenderlich was a young German Lutheran who immigrated to the US, converted to Methodism, and returned to Germany to introduce and spread that Christian sect. A memoir of his experience came into my possession, was translated by my daughters, and provides the basis of some of that character’s words and actions.

The US Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant as a foundation of government for all American citizens. But, the men and women of that era (and ours), influenced by societal norms or religious dictates, have never fully understood its real meaning. Therein lies the promise and the struggle between principle and prejudice in Kat’s Dilemma.

K: The Letter Writer

Franz K is a Prague insurance lawyer who is also a dedicated part-time writer of literature. After meeting Felice at his best friend’s engagement party, he begins to correspond with her. Felice lives in Berlin. Their correspondence soon grows into a romantic relationship carried out nearly entirely in writing at first, though Franz visits Berlin occasionally to see her. Felice wants to take the relationship towards marriage and presses Franz in that direction. But Franz is ambivalent about marriage. It is something he strongly wants and equally strongly fears because he believes that his writing demands his single-minded dedication.

The result is a dramatic struggle he experiences internally between Franz the man and Franz the writer, with Felice becoming the unwitting battlefield on which it is fought, and its hapless victim. The struggle is the subject of the novel and it unfolds mainly between Prague and Berlin in a dramatic historical period starting just before the outbreak of World War 1 and continuing as the war progresses.

Inevitable Consequences?

In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, the Espinosa brothers are enraged by the mistreatment of Mexican Nationals in the newly acquired American territories. They embark on a rampage spanning vast distances through northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, killing and robbing American men. Tom Tobin, a skilled hunter, occasional army scout, rancher, and seasoned Indian fighter, is tasked by the commander of Fort Garland to track down the Espinosas.

This gripping story delves into Tobin’s history and exploits, while also depicting the events and circumstances that shaped the Espinosas’ lives. The acquisition of the Southwest through the U.S.-instigated war with Mexico forever changed the lives of the Mexicans who had called those lands home for generations.

As Tobin pursues the notorious brothers across the rugged frontier, readers are taken on a thrilling journey through a tumultuous period in American history, exploring the complexities of the Mexican-American War and its impact on the people caught in its wake.

In Silence Cries the Heart

“I’ll be waitin’ fer ye on the other side, my hand outstretched, till ye reach fer me when yer earthly time is done. Then our clasp shall ne’er be broken again...”

Sometimes love can be so strong that it ruptures the confines of a single lifetime, extending into those beyond. This is what Caitlyn Hegarty, an American schoolteacher, learns on her trip to Scotland where she soon becomes entangled in the tragic history of a pair of 17th-century lovers. Standing before the dungeon at Undlay Castle, she relives the romantic adventures of the roguish thief and poet, Donal Donn, and his doomed passion for Mary McElroy, the spirited daughter of the laird of Undlay. Unable to shake their spell, Caitlyn is drawn into the shadows of the past as she attempts to solve the mystery enshrouding their forbidden love.

Inspired by the true story of Domhnull Donn and Mary Grant, the novel depicts the timeless power of love amidst the lawlessness, superstition, and pageantry of a lost age.

In Hugger Mugger

In Hugger Mugger tells the story of two women, one a member of the nobility and one a commoner who are both constrained by their sex and position to live the lives they want. They are forced to hide, to lie and to suffer in order to survive under the English laws.

Mary Sidney, a noblewoman, vows to write the greatest works in the English language, to fulfil the ambition of her deceased brother, but she must use trickery and deceit to have her writings published. Sarah Burton, a commoner, scarred by a nobleman, uses her intellect to outfox the Crown.

After a chance meeting, the women form a friendship that enables them to get what they desire most.

Hawdon

This novel is about Nemo, a minor character who dies early in Dickens’s Bleak House and is buried in a pauper graveyard in London. It turns out that Nemo, originally Captain Hawdon, has important relationships with the main characters of the novel. Lady Dedlock, mother of Hawdon’s child Esther Summerson, flees from her husband and dies at the gates to this graveyard. Hawdon: A Prequel to Bleak House brings Nemo to life, consistent with the clues laid down by Dickens. Included in this, we follow Captain Hawdon in Afghanistan during the first Afghan war of 1839 to 1842 and then in Ireland during the great famine of the late 1840s. This is a novel about dedication in relationships, the scourge of disease, and anticolonialism in Victorian times.

Guardian Guerrillas

This is the fascinating story of Frank James, Jesse James older brother, as a bushwhacker in Quantrill’s Partisan Rangers during the Civil War. The actions of this brash, Shakespeare quoting young man represents the best and worst of guerrilla warfare in those turbulent and violent times.

After fighting as a Confederate soldier at Wilson’s Creek, captured and paroled, he returned home as a cocky nineteen-year-old barely staying out of jail. He joins Quantrill’s bushwhackers with escapades that are full of daring and bravery, sometimes cruelty, but also with humour.

We follow him through the many skirmishes and battles including the raids on Lawrence Kansas and Centralia Missouri and the critical events that precipitated them, the women’s prison collapse where several bushwhacker relatives were killed or injured and the infamous “General Order Number 11” that forcibly drove out all residents of an area over 2,200 square miles, twice the size of Rhode Island.

The characters in this work include soldiers, generals, politicians, crooks, thieves, farmers, bankers, lovers, wives, and sisters that suffered or caused suffering in this oft untold American history and their post bellum lives that were fraught with danger, excitement, success for some, failure for many, with ironic, karmic twists.

What drove these young men to become Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers? Were they blood thirsty cutthroats or Guardian Guerrillas?

Government Girls

It’s 1942, and best friends Mary and Marge leave their teaching jobs behind in Iowa to move to Washington D.C. to work for the FBI. Excited yet apprehensive, neither of them could anticipate the rapid changes the war will bring into their lives.

Arriving at Union Station, they meet Dotty, a quick-witted woman who left her all-girl band in New York City in search of new opportunities. Despite rampant racism, Dotty manages to find a clerical job with the government, thanks to her prized possession - a typewriter.

The three women band together, renting rooms in a run-down mansion that operates as a restaurant and boarding house. Under the same roof lives Natalie, an eccentric artist trying desperately to sell her screenplays and achieve her Hollywood dreams.

As Mary and Marge begin their demanding fingerprint filing jobs at the FBI, they find themselves growing increasingly vulnerable, but also courageous, in the face of a world ruptured by war. The four women couldn’t be more different, yet they forge an unbreakable bond confronting rapidly shifting social conventions and opportunities for women.