Murder and the Fairchild Legacy

When billionaire Houston socialite Richard Fairchild is found dead under suspicious circumstances, his wife Mariah refuses to accept the police verdict of suicide. Desperate for answers, she recruits small-town radio owners Delilah Morgan and Norma Davis to investigate. She offers the struggling entrepreneurs compensation they can’t refuse – $20,000 each, a bailout for their failing station, and an all-expenses paid trip to Mariah’s Hill Country resort.

At first reluctant, Delilah and Norma soon find themselves embroiled in the glitzy Houston elite circles the Fairchilds inhabited. With a list of suspects who had motive to kill Richard, the duo follow a trail of lies, affairs, and shady business deals. The stakes grow ever higher as it becomes clear the Fairchild legacy – and their own lives – are in danger. From Texas hill country horse ranches to slick Houston high-rises, Delilah and Norma uncover adultery, blackmail, rivalry… and murder. But will the radio sleuths solve the mystery before the killer silences them too?

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. 

Opelika Opiate

“Opiate” – to induce sleep; to stupefy; to hijack the brain and change its normal function.

Opelika, Alabama – where cars, men, and race collide to unhinge the life of a young woman. Piecing it back together will require figuring out the role she played, and who she really is – or wants to be.  

Poetsy II

If I knew how to draw a picture of how I feel, I would pick up a pencil and paper and begin sketching.

If I were capable of sculpting a solid figure of my thoughts, I would grab a hammer, some stone or granite, and start chiseling away.

If I could choreograph a dance or even a fight explaining what I want to say, I would rise, do some warmup exercises, and start moving.

Since I am able do none of these things, but I can write in a way that happens to have a rhyme and rhythm to it, that’s exactly what I do.This is to place into the world the love, despair, and everything in between that would otherwise stay hidden inside, where it would do very little good. I believe everyone can find such an outlet, a medium or forum that allows us to feel freedom.

Roots & the Remittance Man

In Roots & the Remittance Man, a captivating historical fiction, we follow a diverse family tree as its branches converge in the Carrot River Valley of the Northwest Territories in 1902. From Sweden, Muskoka, and Iowa, these intrepid settlers make their way to homestead near Melfort, Saskatchewan.

A Scottish family, burdened by loss from an epidemic, travels by wagon train, finding salvation in a Cree chief. In Sweden, tragedy strikes, and a widowed wife and her daughters board a cattle ship for Halifax. They arrive in Winnipeg, accept a cook position at a Melfort hotel, and embark on a grueling journey through forest and muskeg.

A young Norwegian man walks 700 miles to the United States-Canadian border, immerses himself in Indigenous history, and follows a freight swing to his homestead. Settlers and Indigenous peoples unite against prairie fires, forging bonds that transcend their differences.

Through decades, the family experiences joys and sorrows, weathering the storms of two World Wars, prohibition, swamp fever, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Great Depression. As technology advances, women gain the right to vote and become legally recognized as persons.

At the outset of World War II, a remittance man from Scotland enters the picture, his life becoming significantly entwined with the descendants of these resilient pioneers. Roots & the Remittance Man is a sweeping tale of perseverance, unity, and the indomitable human spirit that shaped the Canadian frontier.

Running on Empty

As the Lucas Twins serial killers secretly terrorize the lives of nearly 100 victims, there are two victims that escaped. One escaped certain death in 1979 and another escaped 40 years later.

Fate brings the two together as they realize their lives have been mentally and psychology ruined by the same people.

They embark on a journey to find their tormentors only to have many other secrets revealed. The world of a supernatural being is discovered along with a bizarre ritual that keeps the twins hungry for more victims even as they reach their 70s. Revenge is best served cold. 40 years is definitely cold enough. Now is the time for justice to be served.

Shining Star

Quirky writer Elena Jimenez begins an unlikely secret friendship over email with ultra-famous actor Ben Jones after a serendipitous first meeting. Over several years, the two forge an enduring bond centered around the joys and challenges of parenting. During this time, Elena painfully endures a failed marriage, which takes her years to recover from.

From day one, Elena and Ben share a palpable attraction, readily apparent to those around them. Elena finds herself longing for those exhilarating moments when she gets to see or hear from him again. Ben seems to inhabit an entirely different world defined by fame, fortune, and a jet-setting lifestyle. By comparison, Elena’s life appears mundane – a single mom navigating her writing career.

When Elena finally gathers the courage to explore her feelings, she’s catapulted into Ben’s dazzling world of celebrity. Will she adapt to the glaring spotlight, or will the trauma of her past undermine her shot at happiness?

Story 1: The Delights of Sean Jr.

Sean Jr. had a tough life—as his mother told him, he had the ‘forbidden illness’: lusting for men. His uncle took him in, yet Sean lived a criminal lifestyle ingrained in the family business. Thug life meant trouble was Sean’s middle name; the drugs and jail did not help much either.

Now Sean had two loving parents. Yet his uncle was in conflict, wanting to protect Sean from the evils of their family’s work while disapproving of his player lifestyle. Meanwhile, the body count from their criminal exploits continued to rise.

Synchronicity

Fractured Identities offers an unflinching look into the complexities of desire, identity, and survival within a Hungarian Jewish family during the crucible of the Second World War. Brace yourself for a harrowing psychosexual journey that confronts the limits of the human psyche and morality.

At the story’s center is an uncle – a Jungian psychiatrist – whose career is stifled under the oppressive Nazi regime. Bereft of his practice, he grapples with the dissolution of his professional identity. Opposite him is his wife, a once-successful actress and singer. Constrained by her Jewish heritage, she challenges both her own and her husband’s sexual boundaries as a form of escape from the confinements of religious and societal norms.

Their niece, prodigiously gifted and strikingly beautiful, is raised by her aristocratic, war-hero grandfather. Throughout the war, she faces a relentless assault on her body and mind. Her identity oscillates violently, from a vulnerable Jewish girl to a fierce supporter of Nazi ideology, even as her capacity for scientific innovation and acts of heroism grow. Yet she, too, cannot evade the war’s corrosive ethical compromises.

The Air That We Breathe - Book One

Father Marcellinus warns the young monk, saying, ‘The air that we breathe, that is the creature that we become’ explaining how every influence, both good and evil ultimately shape us into the person that we are. Based on real events, this novel unfolds in a nineteenth century abbey and is about a young man who struggles to face the truth of who he really is, something that all of us must ultimately do in our own lives. The reader is invited into that cloister, so full of passions and conflicts.

Simon desires only one thing since he was a little boy, and that is to serve God as a priest. He dreams of wearing silken gold vestments and being enveloped in great clouds of incense, offering the Sacrifice to God. When he is seventeen, he leaves home and becomes a monk far north in the mountains of Pennsylvania. His faith is genuine, and he gives himself to his studies in order to become a Roman Catholic priest.

But not all is as he expected. A sexual awakening he had not anticipated, blossoms in him and boyhood dreams are shaken to the core as he wrestles with a side of himself he never counted on. He falls in love in a monastic world filled with holy men, mischievous souls, colorful individuals and also great scoundrels.

A powerful visitor invites him to Rome, something Simon never expected. There is a dark price tag, however, something Simon is unaware of.

The Allies

This book lay almost half a century at the bottom of an old computer before it was published. At the time, it was considered politically ‘inappropriate’ because it was too ‘anti-Russian.’ It was written in America by two political émigrés, refugees from the communist part of the world, who knew Russia as it really is and always has been, even during World War II, when it pretended to be a faithful ally of the United States.

American pilots, crew members of a B 29 bomber, are hit by anti-aircraft fire during a reconnaissance flight over Japan. They make an emergency landing in USSR territory. It would seem that they are safe on the lands of an ally, but the reality turned out to be frighteningly different.

Although this book is historical fiction and its characters are invented, they are woven into real historical events related to the Manhattan Project infiltrated from within by Soviet spies. During Gorbachev’s ‘thaw,’ Stalin was forgotten, and Russia was to be ‘an example and model of democracy’ from then on. Even then, this book was supposed to be a warning; now it is allmost a wake-up call. Today’s Russia, waging a criminal, aggressive war against Ukraine, Russia of Vladimir Putin, with its troll farms, armed green men, murdering disobedient citizens in labor camps, poses an even greater threat to the entire free world.

The Attenuating Puritan

Embark on a contemplative journey with our altruistic hero, a reflection of purity in words and deeds, yet occasionally marked by ancestral toxins. With unwavering conviction, he dances under the world’s weight, marching into the unknown, his steps marked by hope and staunch faith.

Bound by a noble quest to restore the splendor of Eden, his every gesture is a sacrifice, a stride towards the pristine and divine. Amidst adversities, he stands a fortified pilgrim, mastering the shackles of mind and body, emerging as a triumphant victor, a mirror to us all daring to confront our reflections.

He is the champion of tainted sacraments, a crusader against the clutches of heavy metal and forever chemicals, hinting that our destinies might be cradled in such hands. As we tread the path of love eternal, each step taken is righteous, a gentle move towards the boundless cosmos that binds us in love.

In The Attenuating Puritan, every breath taken is a whisper of attenuation, every quenched thirst a sigh of grace, and every bounty received a step closer to the celestial, encapsulating a tale of hope, resilience, and the ceaseless quest for the divine amidst the terrestrial.