A year after a traumatic injury, Detective Cynthia "Syd" Brogan has been cleared for duty. Flashbacks, though, still haunt her. While investigating the death of a drunken vagrant, Brogan confronts a mysterious "emperor of the homeless" and uncovers a heinous crime threatening decades of disaster. No one believes her. Even as dying vagrants, a Biblical plague, and a terrorist threat rock the peaceful community of Virginia Beach, Brogan is put on modified duty pending psychological review. In this story of the triumph of courage over fear, Brogan defies her orders and risks more than her career to stop the terror.
"...weaves together old mysteries, modern-art theft and some aristocratic back-stabbing in this intriguing tale." - Kirkus Reviews Centuries of secrets, cryptic messages from the past, and one determined young American lead to a cozy mystery and murder in the legendary estate of Southjoy Mission. The patriarch of a legendary estate has died, and the obligations of the estate have passed by inheritance to his granddaughter, his sole survivor, someone he never knew. Catlyn Stacey is a young American, inexperienced, alone, and disconnected from the rich British heritage of both her ancestry and the estate. Ambitious developers crave the commercial potential of the property, while an aging and forgotten professor laments their ruthless campaigns that are certain to destroy yet another historic landmark. Confounding them all, a baron of bleak prospect covets the wealth of the estate, while the wife of a baronet of lesser rank longs for the prestige the estate would bring to her. Drawn by the lure of fortune and influence, these powerful forces, and yet one more, a clandestine, ill-willed force, would lay claim to it all by any means necessary, legitimate or otherwise. It's a war of progress, preservation, and aristocracy, but its combatants may find it a murderous affair beyond their considerable control. "A large cast of colorful characters provides... a challenge to readers as they try to solve the crime... appealing hints of romance and some moments of levity... A pleasantly old-fashioned mystery in a present-day setting." - Kirkus Reviews
Naturally Wild in the Nearly Civilized brings together nature photography and nature-minded poetry. Through picture and verse, we get a glimpse of the interplay of Nature's grace with every hope and dream, every fear and doubt, every joy that life brings our way. Accented with timeless insights from literary masters, Naturally Wild in the Nearly Civilized creates a photo-poetic essay recalling a time when Nature itself was considered life's greatest poet.
Sometimes a case is so intimate, so much a part of you, it follows you, seeks you out, beckons to you, then it draws you away into its own world. "He called them his Forces of Discontent, all those sources of fragmented violence waiting to be harnessed... The dissidents, the abused, the abandoned, and the disgruntled." All he lacked was a day of reckoning, and now he had it. Like a gift from the gods of anarchy, a vow of blood vengeance against the government opens a pathway to the destruction of the American heartland. To thwart it, Detective Syd Brogan must abandon the world of civil laws and let herself be drawn into a remote enclave where repression is law and vengeance is justice. It's a desperate measure for a desperate time. So, too, are its desperate consequences.
