The Messenger of Athens - A Novel

Emily Rutherford is having a very bad day.

Of course, having the man you’ve loved forever announce his engagement to your (now very former) best friend will do that.

Emily is sure nothing good could possibly come out of this horrid situation. But she lets her sisters—along with Francis Riley, the delectable but brooding Earl of Dunhurst—convince her that a season in London will be just the thing.

Now Emily has a choice: sulk in a corner while her sisters enjoy the glitter of the ton . . . or become the belle of the ball, dazzling everyone on an earl’s arm. But as Francis helps Emily get back on her feet, she quickly realizes that a childhood crush is nothing compared to the power of true love.

Denver, 1919

I decided to use the name Geraldine Brunton. It's not the name I was born with, nor the name I married, but it will hide who I really am...and what I have done.

I've taken a job as companion to wealthy invalid Emmaline Stubbs, whose fragile exterior hides a will of iron. Despite its opulence, the Stubbs household is not a happy one. Emmaline's equally stubborn daughter and charismatic, untrustworthy son-in-law want control of her fortune, forcing the entire staff to take sides in their power struggle. I must tread carefully in this tension-filled household if I want to keep my job and my secrets.

Events take a deadly turn when Mrs. Stubbs is nearly killed and a maid is found murdered. Though I ought to keep a low profile, it soon becomes clear I must uncover the truth. Because if I don't, my past will make me the prime suspect...

88,000 words

At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

For most people life is a monotonous routine.

On board a non-belligerent nuclear submarine designed to rescue crews from disabled ballistic missile subs life is incredibly boring. For two or three months the crew must stand ready for a disaster that hardly ever happens, perform maintenance on an array of microphones on the floor of the ocean, and occasionally do a little snooping around enemy naval bases.

If not on watch sailors can sleep, read, play games, watch movies, exercise and ruminate about family, friends, lovers. Occasionally they try to discern what the heck they were thinking when they enrolled. Days creep by like a snail on codeine.

But if unexpectedly the boat surfaces, loads 22 tons of cocaine and a complete stranger comes aboard, odds are that life in that submarine will turn unpredictably frightening.

Everywhere couples settle into habit patterns. Get up, have breakfast, go to work, do the same thing they’ve been doing for so long, go to the grocery store, return home, prepare supper, read a story to the kids, watch a show, go to bed.

Birthdays, holidays and going on vacation once a year break the routine until blowing the candles; setting up the Christmas tree and sunbathing at the same beach become, well, routines.

However, if all of a sudden armed foreigners land where peaceful people live, take hostages and threaten to kill them unless their demands are met, locals want to return to their boring lives immediately.

Riders of Land and Tide is an action-packed thriller that recounts the lives of three main characters from birth and narrates how circumstances beyond their control cleared paths for them. When the thorniest path crosses the other two, all hell breaks loose.

The author of this book -- who has been writing crime fiction and thrillers for thirty-five years, won the IACW’s Hammett and was nominated for the Edgar -- believes this is his best novel. He hopes it will entertain you, inform you and make you wonder whether those who live quiet, monotonous lives are the happiest people on planet Earth.

Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. Embittered by his "former" status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago's South Side, there's not much that can shock him. But when the town's judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption, and scandal.

As a lakeside blizzard buries Aurora, Cork must dig out the truth among town officials who seem dead-set on stopping his investigation in its tracks. But even Cork freezes up when faced with the harshest enemy of all: a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.