Kirjahaku

What if you had the power to rewind time? Make a scene in a restaurant, give your boss the finger, rob a bank just to see how it feels - you could satisfy any whim, fulfill any desire, make any wish you'd ever had come true. The man who wanders into Father Holder's Las Vegas confessional says he has just such a power. The ultimate in wish fulfillment, he calls it. And if something goes wrong? No problem. He just rewinds. He's the man who never makes mistakes. Until, in a moment of weakness, he succumbs to the darkest impulse he's ever had - and can't find a way to undo it. This remarkable tale leads off Scott William Carter's latest short story collection. A dragon addicted to eating humans, a robot on a devastated planet with a spellbinding story to tell, Abraham Lincoln in a world of one-eyed dragons and drafty castles - hopping across time and space, genre and style, Carter offers up eleven provocative tales that are sure to please his growing number of fans as well as win him new ones.

They find him on the beach, shooting bullets into the sand. His name? Jeremiah Cooper, the son of the bullheaded high school football coach. Slight of build, soft of voice, he's got all kinds of torment lurking behind his eyes. But despite Garrison Gage's best efforts, he can't pull the kid out of his shell. Then someone turns up dead at the local community college, and Jeremiah's fragile world shatters. Add a crisis in Gage's good friend's life, an ongoing feud with his adopted daughter about her life choices, and a hauntingly beautiful FBI agent with secrets of her own, and it's a lot more drama than a half-retired private investigator with a bum knee wanted. Whatever happened to quiet rainy nights sipping bourbon, watching the sun sink beneath the waves on the Oregon coast, and trying to think of a ten-letter word that means grumpy and glad about it? But before Gage can even write the word curmudgeon, he's pulled deeper into Jeremiah's world-a world of sex, secrets, and a sadistic evil that preys on human weakness.

In this impressive collection, rising talent Scott William Carter showcases his considerable storytelling skills. Whether his tales lead to the edges of known space, to the fringes of understood time, or the wholesomeness of an American farm, time and again readers will find themselves encountering places and experiences that transcend the mere expected and delight the soul. The Dinosaur Diaries marks a collection not to be missed. "Scott William Carter makes it look easy." - Chizine.com "Beautiful and haunting." - SFRevu.com "Scott is one of those rare writers who can and does cross genres, and do it well. You never know what kind of story you'll get from him, but you do know that it'll be good." - Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Hugo award-winning author of The Disappeared "A stunner." - Fright.com "Riveting." - Tangent Online Includes the following stories: - The Dinosaur Diaries - Road Gamble - A Dark Planetarium - The Liberators - Tommy Top Hat - Shatterboy - Heart of Stone - The Tiger in the Garden - Directions to Mourning's Deep - Motivational Speaker - The Time Traveler's Wife - Epic, The - Happy Time - The Grand Mal Reaper - The World in Primary Colors - Father Hagerman's Dog - With Dignity - A Christmas in Amber

Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Known for their cunning and savagery. In the late eighties, another infamous serial killer sent seventeen innocent people to early graves. Then, suddenly, the murders in the terrified city of Portland, Oregon stopped-and the Goodbye Killer got away. Myron Vale remembers it well. Long before a fateful bullet cursed him with the ability to see ghosts, he was the young son of the city's most esteemed detective. The case changed Hank Vale, haunting him with a single glimpse of the killer's otherworldly face. He was never the same man again. Or the same father. Now a new victim points to the Goodbye Killer's return. And when the most powerful forces on the other side of the great divide approach Myron desperate for help, he uncovers a terrifying truth. It's not just the living who should fear for their immortal souls ... even the dead can die.

A beached sailboat. A missing man. A distraught woman staggering ashore. There to greet her-Garrison Gage, full-time curmudgeon and part-time private investigator, who quickly finds himself thrust into his familiar role of crusader for the desperate and downtrodden. The woman claims to have no memory, but is she lying? When a body later washes ashore, the mystery deepens and the stakes ratchet up another notch. Dark money and even darker intentions. Violence both threatened and real. The woman may be at the heart of it all, or merely an innocent interloper who chose the wrong boat at the wrong time. Only Gage can discover the truth.

Harriet Abel never shows up for her appointment. Irritating as hell? Sure. It's hard enough to work as a private investigator without potential clients standing you up. Of course, it's difficult to show up when you're dead. A revered community figure in the Oregon coast town of Barnacle Bluffs, the teacher extraordinaire never gets a chance to explain why she wants to hire Garrison Gage before her body turns up in a sandy grave. Seldom deterred by the lack of a client, Gage barrels forward intent on discovering the woman's killer. Unfortunately, the professional curmudgeon stirs up a lot more trouble than he expects, putting innocent people in imminent danger.In the past, Gage always triumphed over whatever dark forces stood in his way, but this time he may have gone too far - and he won't be the only one paying the price.

The dead do not dream. A week before Christmas, John and Laura Ray storm into Myron's office, desperate to find their missing daughter. Money? They don't have any. Clues? They have few. Plagued by mounting bills and a skull-crushing migraine, Portland's only ghost detective wants nothing more than to show them the door. But defying his conscience always proves tougher to Myron Vale than saying no, and he soon finds himself embroiled in one of the strangest cases of his career. The more he learns about this unique little girl and all of her extraordinary abilities, the more he feels a kinship to her. Who took Olivia Ray? And why? The answers propel him toward a tantalizing solution to all of his problems - and a violent clash with a powerful personality, one who can cause irreparable harm to not just Myron, but everyone he loves. "The Sixth Sense meets Spenser For Hire in Scott William Carter's magnificent Ghost Detective."- Michael J. Totten, author of Taken "Scott is one of those rare writers who can and does cross genres, and do it well. You never know what kind of story you'll get from him, but you do know that it'll be good." - Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Hugo award-winning author of The Disappeared

If everybody would just leave Sam alone, she'd be perfectly happy hanging out in The Land Between, the undeveloped forest at the end of the street where she can pretend, at least for a little while, that life is much better than it really is. Then a strange boy moves in next door and all her problems get a lot worse.Rob (or does he go by Bobby?) insists that his parents are prisoners in a mysterious castle in another world. Others claim the truth of his past is far more tragic. When her new friend vows to rescue his parents or die trying, Sam must make a fateful choice that will change both their lives forever - and reveal just how thin the line between imagination and hope can really be.

On a rainy night at a tiny Oregon college, a shadowy figure at the back of the hall interrupts Bullwick Farley's mythology lecture: "Little Red Riding Hood has done something terrible," he says, "and I desperately need your help before it's too late."Just another story in a class all about stories? A myth, a fable, a tale told and retold? The students might think so. But ten years after leaving a life where even the strangest stories turn out to be true, Farley faces a choice. Stick with his comfortable, if lonely, life as a professor. Or risk it all to go looking for the woman who broke his heart.A mystery with a twist, a touching love story, and a new take on a time-honored fairy tale, Looking for Little Red provides rare insights on the power of stories to shape our lives, and the importance of memories, even painful ones.

A curmudgeon. An iconoclast. A loner. That's how people describe Garrison Gage, and that's when they're being charitable.After his wife's brutal murder in New York, and Gage himself is beaten nearly to death, the hobbled private investigator retreats three thousand miles to the quaint coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs, Oregon. He spends the next five years in a convalescent stupor, content to bide his time filling out crossword puzzles and trying to forget that his wife's death is his fault. But all that changes when he discovers the body of a young woman washed up on the beach, and his conscience draws him back into his old occupation - forcing him to confront the demons of his own guilt before he can hope to solve the girl's murder."Irresistible for an old John D. MacDonald fan like me . . . Recommended." -- Brandywine Books

They find his body at the bottom of Heceta Head Lighthouse-Ed Boone, a longtime volunteer who commits suicide rather than see his grim diagnosis to its bitter end. The strangeness of the old man's death makes the local news, but Garrison Gage thinks little of it until the famous Nora West sneaks into town with a strange letter in hand.Professing he wants to go to his grave with a clear conscience, Ed claims to be Nora's biological father. But the revelation stirs up all kinds of complicated emotions for the talented but troubled musician, who hires Gage to find out the truth.Yet the truth may be a lot more disturbing - and dangerous - than either of them are prepared to believe.

Former FBI agent turned full-time drifter, Karen Pantelli pursues a promising lead on her long missing mother to Orcas Island, Washington. Toiling as a hotel maid, she reaches a dead end until an encounter with an eccentric math professor raises a gruesome possibility. Her mother may have been murdered by a serial killer, the work of a cunning monster who has claimed hundreds of lives and evaded detection for decades by camouflaging his kills as accidents, suicides, or random acts of violence. Aided by recent advances in artificial intelligence, the professor believes he can finally predict the killer's pattern. But then a stunning twist changes the game, propelling Karen across thousands of miles on a desperate mission to save innocent people before the trail goes cold forever.