Calvin's Head

Jason Dekker doesn’t believe in ghosts but is haunted by memories of Amsterdam. A move to the White Mountains of New Hampshire with his dog, Calvin, promises a fresh start. College friend Tessa Bernstein enlists his help at Cloverkist Inn, where strange occurrences are scaring off customers and staff. Is someone trying to drive Tessa out of business, or are darker forces at work? Does an enigmatic boy who bonds with Calvin hold the key to a secret dating back to the Civil War? The unsolicited arrival of psychic medium Valraven creates further turmoil when his investigation into paranormal activity clashes with Dekker’s skepticism. Loyalties shift and deep emotional wounds resurface as past and present converge with far-reaching consequences. Ghosts of memory may prove more difficult to exorcise than any phantom at Cloverkist.

Life in Amsterdam isn't all windmills and tulips when you're homeless. Jason Dekker lives in a jeep with his dog, Calvin, on the outskirts of the city. A thesis on Van Gogh brought him to the Netherlands, and the love of Dutch artist Willy Hart convinced him to stay. But Willy is gone and Dekker is on the brink of a total meltdown. On a summer morning in the park, Calvin sniffs out the victim of a grisly murder. Dekker sees the opportunity for a risky strategy that might solve their problems. Unfortunately, it puts them directly in the sights of the calculating stone-cold killer, Gadget. Their paths are destined to collide, but nothing goes according to plan when they end up together in an attic sex-dungeon. Identities shift and events careen out of control, much to the bewilderment of one ever-watchful canine. Oscar Wilde wrote that each man kills the thing he loves. He didn't mean it literally. Or did he?

When Milo agreed to accompany his friend Mark for a weekend getaway with six other men in northern Arizona, he did not anticipate a snowstorm stranding them all in their lodge. But they make the best of it. Their biggest concern is how they’re going to entertain themselves until the snowstorm ends.

Complicating things for Milo is his secret attraction to Mark, not to mention Mark’s renewed attraction to his handsome ex-boyfriend, Brick, who seems like he wants to rekindle the relationship.

But all is not as it seems in their cozy snow-covered lodge. When one of them is found brutally murdered, tension between the friends escalates. It seems that everyone has their secrets, and some of those secrets are proving deadly. Suspicion mounts as each person wonders who is behind the killing, and why.

With no way to contact the authorities, it’s up to Milo and Mark to discover which of their friends is the murderer and stop him before they become the next target.

Riding a tide of success after helping his boyfriend, Lyle, save their neighborhood of Tinker Creek from predatory developers, reporter Manny Porter throws himself into his career and community activism. The last thing he expects is to discover the body of prominent research scientist Phillip Nikolaidis during a laboratory tour. Murder can strike anywhere, and all the evidence is pointing toward Tristan DeJesus, Manny’s nineteen-year-old mentee.

Manny only has the holiday season to overcome jealous colleagues, an angry corporation, and a skeptical publisher to discover who killed Nikolaidis before the judicial system condemns an innocent man to lethal injection.

Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

In Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment, Addison Grimmins, slum-born but ambitious and ruthless, sets out on a quest to bring back the Lord Exchequer of England’s missing wife. Now, in Pursued: Lillian’s Story, we get the other side of the story from Lillian, the woman being pursued.

From boat to stagecoach to train, as Lillian and her questionably reliable companions elude her pursuers throughout Europe, Lillian writes to her daughter-in-law on her honeymoon, warning her of what she may expect marrying into the Ravenglass estate and its cursed male line of descent. Lillian recounts how as a girl she entered a dream marriage to the “golden” son of a great Lord. And how, little by little, one misfortune after another, the dream union threatened to become a nightmare that would destroy her reputation—and her life.