Kirjahaku

The poems in Explorations are reflections and observations on nature and life. Bookended by Rotunda Dreams and Appalachian Dawn, the poem Western Explorations is a Whitman-esque series of poemettes in which the author's journey through several National Parks in the American West which parallels a spiritual journey of the soul. Rotunda Dreams recounts a beautifully warm spring evening sitting on the steps of Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, Appalachian Dawn chronicles a magical morning drive through the mountains of western Virginia and West Virginia.

Teancum Leon, who goes by Tean, is a wildlife veterinarian. His life has settled into a holding pattern: he loves his job, he hates first dates, and he only occasionally has to deal with his neighbor Mrs. Wish's cat-related disasters.All of that changes, though, when a man appears in his office, asking for help to find his brother. Jem is convinced that something bad has happened to Benny, and he thinks Tean might be able to help. Tean isn't sure, but he's willing to try. After all, Jem is charming and sweet and surprisingly vulnerable. Oh. And hot.Then things get strange: phone calls with no one on the other end of the line; surveillance footage that shows what might be an abduction; a truck that tries to run Tean and Jem off the road. As Tean and Jem investigate, they realize that Benny might have stumbled onto a conspiracy and that someone is willing to kill to keep the truth from coming out.But not everything is as it seems, and Tean suspects that Jem has been keeping secrets of his own.

Auggie is starting his first year at Wroxall College. It's a punishment, and he's determined to make his way through the year, prove himself, and earn the right to go back home.Theo is a grad student recovering from a terrible car accident. He's lost his husband and their daughter, and he's trying to figure out how to keep going.When both are tangled up in a murder, though, they have to set their personal problems aside and work together-first to clear their names, and then, when the killer turns his attention on them, to survive.But what might really kill them is finishing a seminar together on King Lear.

Elien Martel is a survivor, but surviving, he's beginning to discover, isn't the same thing as living. In the house he shares with his much older boyfriend, Elien spends his days trying to stay as far away from living as possible. Living, he has learned, means that sooner or later you'll get hurt.When a member of Elien's support group dies under strange circumstances, though, Elien finds himself in a web of bizarre coincidences. The responding officer turns out to be another member of Elien's support group-a man named Mason, who has made no effort to hide his dislike of Elien. Then, just a few days later, Mason tries to kill Elien in front of dozens of witnesses.As violence ripples through Elien's world, he begins to suspect that the coincidences are not coincidences at all. Something is at work behind the cascade of tragedies, something vicious and intelligent. Something that has wanted Elien for a long time.To defeat it, Elien will have to do what he fears most and face the darkness in his own past. Worse, he'll have to take the risk of trying to live again.

When Auggie Lopez returns to Wroxall College, he's determined that his second year will be different from the chaos he faced as a freshman. He's living in the Sigma Sigma house, he's got a good group of friends, and his social media presence is growing. Meeting a hot older guy on move-in day is just the cherry on top. All he has to do now is avoid getting dragged into another murder.That last part, though, turns out to be easier said than done, especially when Auggie's ex-roommate, Orlando, asks for help. Orlando's brother Cal has gone missing, and Orlando wants Auggie to find him.Auggie knows he'll need help, but recruiting his friend-and crush-Theo is not as straightforward as he expects. While Auggie was gone for the summer, Theo has started dating someone, and neither Theo nor Auggie knows how to handle the shift in their relationship.Finding Orlando's brother dead only makes their situation more complicated. Although the police are quick to write off the homicide as a drug deal gone wrong, Auggie and Theo aren't so sure, and Orlando begs them to keep investigating. To learn the truth, Auggie and Theo will have to untangle a web of lies while keeping each other safe from a killer who is determined to stop them. As Auggie and Theo dig deeper, they realize that Cal was a stranger even to the people who thought they knew him. And Auggie and Theo both begin to fear that they are also strangers to each other.

Rabid readers. Backbiting authors. A romance convention from hell.Shaw Aldrich and his best friend, boyfriend, and partner, North McKinney, are doing great, thanks. The aftermath of their search for the Slasher has finally settled down. Their private investigation agency is thriving. And after years of missed opportunities, they're finally together. Sure, work might be taking up every spare minute, and their time together as a couple might have evaporated-but that's normal, right?When an author asks for their help investigating threats against a gay romance convention, Shaw sees an opportunity to shake up their routine and maybe have some fun. But the convention isn't what he expects. Between the rabid fans and the backbiting authors, the death threats-which seem totally baseless-are the least of North and Shaw's worries.Until, that is, a bestselling author is poisoned in the middle of a panel. Then Shaw and North must race against the clock to find the killer before he (or she) escapes-and before the convention ends. But romance authors are more complicated than either North or Shaw expects, and a treacherous web knits the suspects together.Shaw and North will have to unravel a skein of lies and half-truths to uncover the killer. It doesn't help that, on top of everything else, Shaw just wants to find his next favorite book-and, if it isn't asking too much, have sex with North at least one more time in his current incarnation.Indirection is the first book in a follow-up series; read North and Shaw's first adventures in The Borealis Investigations, beginning with Orientation.

Finding a missing boy will be hard. Dinner with Shaw's parents might be murder.When a rising star in the state senate asks Shaw Aldrich and North McKinney to transport her son, Flip, to and from his drug testing appointments, they're not happy-they don't do babysitting jobs. Arriving at the boy's dorm room, though, they discover that the door has been forced and that Flip has disappeared, and rumors of strange men on campus suggest that something seriously bad has happened. The students and staff at the ritzy private school have plenty to tell about Flip, but the deeper North and Shaw dig, the less they understand what might have happened to the boy.Then one of Flip's friends is found dead, and it's clear that she was killed for coming too close to the truth. As North and Shaw search for answers, they meet resistance from every angle: from the school's staff, from Flip's friends, from the police, even from Flip's family. Someone wants the boy to disappear-and is willing to kill to make sure it happens.The home front has its share of trouble too. North's 'uncle' Ronnie is back at his old games, drawing North and Shaw into a job that seems simple on the surface-find a missing man who might be in trouble-but they suspect that the request hides something sinister. Ronnie's involvement, and the job itself, puts the detectives on a collision course with Shaw's parents and a strain on their fledgling relationship.As the days pass, North and Shaw realize time is running out for Flip and, maybe, for them as well. They have been misled from the very beginning-and they might be too late.

They killed a girl to keep their secrets. They won't stop there.A new home, a fresh start, a chance to do things right this time-and Shaw and North are determined to make it work. But the night of their housewarming party, things don't go as planned. A reporter arrives, wanting to talk to North about his ex-husband, his father, and a criminal syndicate. No sooner have they gotten rid of her than another unwanted guest appears: a street boy named Nik, whom Shaw met months before, begging them to help him find his missing friend, Malorie.Retracing Malorie's steps, North and Shaw learn about the dangerous demimonde of runaway teenagers. Their investigation takes them into the path of men and women who have learned to profit off the suffering and abandonment of children: shelters, clinics, labor brokers, and pimps.Meanwhile, North's Uncle Ronnie is set on revenge, and his target this time is North's father. As North struggles to track down Ronnie and put an end to the danger, he finds himself considering a deal with the devil, and the offer might be too good to pass up.When North and Shaw find Malorie's body, evidence suggests she was murdered-and that her death is connected in some way with a truck stop halfway across the state. But as they draw closer to the truth, the danger grows. The people who killed Malorie have the Borealis detectives in their sights, and North and Shaw must race to save their own lives before the killers can strike again.

Watson is dead. Holmes is alone. And Jack is desperate. Sixteen-year-old Jack Moreno is managing to hold his life together. Barely. After a terrible car accident leaves his father unable to work, Jack makes ends meet by dropping out of school and covering his dad's custodial shifts at a school for troubled teens, high in the Wasatch Mountains. Everything is going all right until the night Jack finds Sarah Watson-yes, descendant of that Watson-dead.When the icy but intriguing Holloway Holmes-yes, descendant of that Holmes-learns of Watson's death, he is determined to discover the killer on his own. But Jack and his father are the prime suspects in the official investigation, and Jack refuses to sit by and wait. In an uneasy alliance with Holmes, Jack must hurry to learn what really happened to Sarah Watson, which means facing down a Moriarty, unearthing secrets and blackmail, and trying to solve the other murder at the Walker School, one that happened more than twenty years before. Working together is the only way Jack and Holmes might find the killer before he catches up with them, but both boys are keeping secrets of their own-secrets that threaten the fragile trust they've managed to build between them.

Blackmail. Breakups. Boys. Trouble always comes in threes.Life is different for Jack Moreno. Good. Definitely good. Well, better, anyway.He's back in school (although classes are harder than he expected). And his dad is healthy (which means he's worrying again about things like Jack's curfew and, oh yeah, grades). And he's got a great girlfriend (who might, justifiably, be running out of patience with him). And Holloway Holmes is his friend (even though it's the kind of friendship that leaves Jack wanting more). So, life is good. Better. Definitely.Except when it comes to money. With his dad still struggling to pay a mountain of medical bills, Jack jumps at the opportunity to make some extra cash. After all, helping a fellow student deal with blackmail isn't exactly new-just a few months before, Jack handled a couple of blackmailers on campus. With the help of Holmes, of course.Only something is different this time. Something Jack can't put his finger on, something that makes him suspect the blackmail is just a cover for something much more serious. And when one of the blackmailers is murdered and Holmes becomes the prime suspect, Jack and Holmes will have to race to figure out what they've missed. Before it's too late for both of them.

Come to Missouri See the sights Solve a murder When Teancum Leon, a wildlife veterinarian, and his husband, semi-reformed conman Jeremiah Berger, go to a conference in central Missouri, they're expecting a short and uneventful trip. Tean will present a paper, attend a few panels, and network (under duress). Jem is looking forward to unlimited poolside drinks, some well-deserved couple time, and peace and quiet.Instead, they find themselves drawn into a frantic search after the head of the association goes missing. Worse, Tean's friend from grad school is arrested-and charged with murder. Their investigation takes them face-to-face with a fervent conspiracist, a band of wildlife traffickers, the owner of a big cat sanctuary, and more. But the real killer doesn't want to be found, and they'll do anything to stop Tean and Jem from learning the truth. Lucky for them, they've got a reluctant group of allies. Not so lucky for them? Their allies are...well, characters. Iron on Iron picks up after the events in Arrows in the Hand, which should be read first.