Kirjahaku

It Happened on St. John is a love letter to one of the world's loveliest and most unique communities in one of the world's loveliest and most unique places. Known locally as Love City, St. John is the smallest and most undeveloped of the three main islands of the United States Virgin Islands. The events in Wilson Roberts' most recent novel take place months before Hurricanes Irma and Maria ripped through the Caribbean with fearsome winds and tides, tearing communities to pieces and leaving shattered homes and lives in its wake.It Happened on St. John is a tale of a community united to fight the schemes of con-artists threatening to develop an unsustainable marina in the Coral Bay section of the island. It is a tale of a community where people put aside small differences to help one another in the face of adversities. It is a tale of a community of music and music makers, artists, artisans and tradespeople, business people, of people from all walks of life.It Happened on St. John is a tale for everyone who knows life on a tropical island can approximate perfection. It is a tale for everyone who has wondered what they might find, should they reinvent themselves on a 20-square mile Caribbean land mass. It is a tale for everyone who would like to believe that most people have in their hearts sparks of generosity ready to burst into flame. It is a tale for everyone who wonders if some mysteries can ever be solved.It Happened on St. John is a tale for everyone who loves St. John, for everyone who knows someone who loves St. John, for everyone who understands what it is to love a place, any place, for everyone who understands what it is to love their community. It is a tale for everyone who understands that a beloved community cannot be allowed to perish, whether due to greed and ignorance, or due to wind, fire and rain.It Happened on St. John is the second novel in Wilson Roberts' St. John trilogy. It is a tale of the island before Hurricanes Irma and Maria. It tells of the calm before those terrible storms, a time when people did not realize they lived in that calm, a time before the winds that rose to form Irma started with a small eddy of dust in the Sahara that blew into a boy's face and filled his eyes.It Happened on St. John is a tale filled with characters and scenes and events that readers will not easily forget.

As Anna Delinny, a central character in A Place in Paradise says, "There are places of power on the earth. Some of great import to the entire world, others of local interest. Talk to someone who has been to Delphi. Ask what kinds of feelings the place engenders. Or Stonehenge. In such places the sense of power is so strong people regard it as evidence of the holy. In other places, the reaction might lead to less pretentious classifications. Perhaps some would call them haunted, or magic." Langeberg, the dark and terrifying ruins of a St. John plantation is such a place, harboring a malevolent power that Anna and her brother Martin have inherited from their grandfather the responsibility for keeping in balance with the rest of the lovely Caribbean island. When the ruins are developed into a luxury resort Anna is forced to confront the balances of her own life. Torn between her academic life in California and dreams of a Nobel in economics and Martin's dedication to the traditional patterns of belief with which they were both raised, she must decide whether evil is real and must be confronted or if it is a nothing more than a word for human over-reaction to unfathomable events. A Place in Paradise is a tale of the present interspersed with episodes from the past, beginning with the brutal French attack led by Henri Longueville on the enslaved Africans of St. John, who 1733 staged one of the first rebellions against slave owners in North American, to the coming of the human flesh eating Caribs, and ending with the arrival on the island of the Taino, who first settled it. All have reason to fear the place that will become Langeberg, an area in which inexplicable evil resides. A Place in Paradise is filled with richly drawn characters, from Anna and Martin to Hank Longe, who first built Langeberg into the Windmill Inn, to his successors Ed and Claudia Langhorne, and Olga Cohen, the Realtor who masterminds the development of Langeberg. It is a story that will keep its readers awake as they listen to the sounds of wild donkeys crying in the night.

Set in the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars, October Fury is the final novel in the St. Ursula trilogy, featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. St. Ursula is a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands. Herbie Lewis, a local bar musician asks Frank to investigate the death of his brother, Jeff.

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. Caribbean Ice, set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the second novel in a trilogy featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. Until being indicted, Bailey Vandeventer ran the Back Bay Escort Service providing sexual services to a high end clientele that included leading politicians, business men and opinion makers. When the Boston Globe ran an article claiming that Bailey had notebooks detailing her clients' identities and sexual preferences she takes refuge on St. Ursula, staying with her college roommate, Vivian Parker, the wife of St. Ursula's Prime Minister, L. Arthur Parker. Parker tells Frank that if he wishes to remain on St. Ursula he will protect Bailey from the people who are seeking her notebooks and wish to silence her. When Bailey is kidnapped Frank, Chance and their friend, Vinnie Ledford, a retired SEAL set out to rescue her.

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. February Heat, set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the first novel in a trilogy featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. In this tale Frank finds his calm and secure life on St. Ursula in jeopardy when he receives a phone call from Liz Ford, a woman he briefly met when returning home on the ferry from St. Thomas. Awakened by her 2:36 am call telling him someone had just tried to kill her and asking for his help, Frank and his friend, Chance agree to help her. After a shoot-out on a beach, they find they must accompany her to Philadelphia where they find her physician husband has been murdered. Before they can safely return to St. Ursula Frank and Chance break into the offices of a mysterious New Hampshire college with connections to the Liz's husband's medical practice and the drug ring with which the doctors are involved. Frank's situation is complicated by his troubled relationships with Howard Penn, the island's Chief Inspector of Police, who despises expatriate Americans, and L. Arthur Parker, St. Ursula's Prime Minster, who will do anything, use anyone in any way he can to assure his continuance in office.

Born in Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater in 1849, George Berrell died in 1933, after a life he often described as one of growing up with the country. His travels of self-discovery and those of his life on the stage are illustrative of a nation moving from travel on foot and horseback to that of automobiles and Boeings first major airliner, the 247. Berrell saw it all and performed on stages in early Deadwood to St. Louis and Chicago and all points in between.

Murder disrupts the calm of Coral Bay on St. John in the United States Virgin Islands. One of the world's most unique communities, it is a place where many people are known by nicknames, their birth names often buried in life histories some-such as the woman known only as X-would rather forget. Robert Palmer, once a husband, father and physician from the hills of Western Massachusetts, staggered by the sudden breakup of his marriage, finds work as a bartender at Dante's Landing, a restaurant and bar at the edge of the water. The Landing is a haven for many of Coral Bay's inhabitants and Robert is quickly accepted as one of them. On his first day at the Landing he is befriended by Bethany Wren, whose rosy image veils a troubled and troubling past. The murder of a loud and abusive tourist outside Dante's Landing is the first of three violent deaths. A corrupt police sergeant investigating the murders is as much a threat as the unknown murderer to the peace of Coral Bay, a laughing, singing, dancing, drinking, hard-working, sailing, swimming, fishing, eating and loving corner of St. John. Murder in Coral Bay is the story of how Robert, native St. Johnian Moonie, and Dante, owner of the Landing, find the murderer despite the ineptness and corruption of members of the Virgin Islands Police Department. Rich in descriptions of character and place, readers who know Coral Bay will find that Murder in Coral Bay will remind them of why they love this rare and lovely community. Readers who have yet to visit will find themselves drawn to discover it on their own. Wilson Roberts has published six previous novels with Wilder Publications. The Cold Dark Heart of the World; Incident on Tuckerman Court; The Serpent and the Hummingbird; Borrowed Trouble; Poet's Seat, and All That Endures.

Anyone interested in the 1960s will be fascinated by the lives of Brud and Reggie Hicks, the brothers from Texas, their wives Gwendolyn Adams and Gwendolyn James, both members of historically prominent Boston area families, Sam Davis, the defrocked Methodist minister who joins them at Walden Brook, Leo Dennison, a local gun dealer and Keetsville native who is a former selectman, and Stacy Phelps, owner of the Keetsville general store. Brud, his wife, Gwennie, and Sam are hired to teach at Graham Community College, under the leadership of its president Colonel Walter Chapman Lewis, USMC, Ret., while Reggie pursues the outlaw ways that resulted in his being booted out of the Army after serving time in a military stockade in Germany. Leo rants against change, especially what he calls "that damned innersnake highway and them community colleges in Greenfield and Holyoke and Springfield, to say nothing of right here in Graham, and all them beatniks and Communists, and...all them other outsiders that will ride that damned road right into God's country here." All That Endures is a portrait of a world in transition, one that inevitably leads to today's troubled world. The novel will stir memories of those who lived through the times it recaptures. It recreates for those who came later an exciting, challenging, dangerous and often hilarious era in American life.

With few exceptions, all the poems in the first section of this collection were written between 2015 and 2017. Those in the second section are mostly from earlier periods. With one obvious exception, the final section is made up of poems written in March, 2018. All were written under the spell of the muse pictured within. May she inspire me forever.

With few exceptions, all the poems in the first section of this collection were written between 2015 and 2017. Those in the second section are mostly from earlier periods. With one obvious exception, the final section is made up of poems written in March, 2018. All were written under the spell of the muse pictured within. May she inspire me forever.

Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon is the final novel in Wilson Roberts' St. John trilogy. Set on St. John, the smallest and least developed of the three main United States Virgin Islands, just prior to and during the 2017 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, Storms tells of the havoc wrought upon the island and its people as the two hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean with fearsome winds and tides, leaving shattered homes, businesses and lives in their wake. Storms is a novel for everyone who loves St. John; for everyone who knows someone who loves St. John; for everyone who understands what it means to love their community. Storms is a novel for everyone who understands that a beloved community cannot be allowed to perish, whether as a result of greed, ignorance, wind, fire or rain.Each novel in Wilson Roberts' trilogy is a stand-alone tale. Major characters in one book are often part of the background in subsequent books. The first, Murder in Coral Bay, introduces readers to the island of St. John, a Caribbean jewel in the United States Virgin Islands, where Roberts and his wife, Diane Esser, had a home for thirty years. In the wake of a murder, a few of the courageous and honest officers' struggle against their corrupt police department as they attempt to bring a murderer to justice.It Happened on St. John, the second novel in the St. John trilogy, is a love letter to the island, in which the community unites to fight the schemes of two con-artists and their fraudulent, extravagant plan to develop a marina that, if it were ever to be built, would threaten the island's natural and social ecology, as well as its economy. It is the story of a community of trades people, musicians, artists, business owners, artisans; a community in which people put aside small differences to help one another in the face of adversity.Like Wilson Roberts' three previous Caribbean novels, February Heat, Caribbean Ice and October Fury, which were set on the fictional British island of St. Ursula, the St. John trilogy presents fully realized characters living in fully realized places. Their lives and loves, their struggles and victories, their grounding in the communities in which they live will remain with readers long after they have closed the books on the final pages.In addition to Storms: Tales of Irmariageddon, Wilder Publications has published thirteen novels by Wilson Roberts and a book of poetry, Before the Storm and Other Poems.