C. G. Haberman

CJ Hand, haunted by an image he does not understand, flees the prairie to work in picturesque western Washington. Here he encounters job troubles that destroy his family life. The divorce and his child moving away from the hate-filled marriage results in seething anger and alcohol abuse.During an investigation, he kills a suspect. Under continual job pressure, his sharp instincts begin to cloud. When all seems hopeless, a friend calls for CJ's help with the real cause of his son's death.CJ grabs the opportunity to return to Nebraska, where he once thrived, and build a new life. He envisions a calm and unobtrusive investigation while enjoying the solitude of rural life. And helping his close friend can bring peace to that small family, now lacking a son who died in a quiet river valley.But what he finds are deceit and political greed. The deadly circles begin to unravel under his probing. The sinister plot of influential people for their own personal gain unfolds and reveals more deaths and serious, far-reaching plans.He finally brings focus to why he long ago fled Nebraska for the West Coast.

After proving his reputation as the top sharpshooter in the world, Ivan Talcott settles in China. Here, he plans to achieve his goal of becoming a multimillionaire by the age of forty. Suddenly, and without warning, he's told to leave China, and never return. Undaunted, he will aim for his goal in the USA. While on a hunting trip in Nebraska, the sharpshooter agrees to a proposal that will fulfill his goal. The hunt becomes his final challenge before he begins a new life. The result of his grisly kills uncovers dark secrets long hidden in the halls of the U.S. Congress. CJ Hand returns to Lincoln, Nebraska after surviving a brutal attack that left him a battered man. His wife, Dee, encourages him to complete a doctoral degree and form the Great Plains Consulting firm. This new challenge, they hope, will lead him away from a destructive path to a stable life. His company gets the boost it needs when he signs a contract for work along the 100th meridian. The study leads him to the dangerous path he left years before. The discoveries, while using drones, leads his field and office crew into a threatening, dark world. The people he admires, and to whom he owes his success, return to help. They again face the evil they once thought erased. The peaceful, rural prairie holds secrets that turn violent. The deadly hunt begins, spilling blood across the western United States.

Since leaving his criminal investigators position, CJ Hand has become a thriving community college instructor in northwest Iowa. Finally, he can settle down with his fianc e Dee and have a peaceful future. But all this tranquility rapidly fades.The sudden failure of an outstanding student, his fianc e's new job opportunities, and a personnel action weigh heavily on CJ Hand. To add to his troubles, his daughter calls with news about his former wife, and a painful past leads him back to Lincoln, Nebraska, to confront these new demons. At the semester's end, on an icy and snowy day, his life would change once again.

The pall of death hangs over two distinctly different valleys separated by eighteen-hundred miles. One a modest, unknown channel drained by a small cool-water stream and the other a magnificent gorge carved by a roaring river that separates two states. Unknown to a man, tormented by loss and intensifying anger, both valleys hold his fate. A bloody mist suddenly fills a truck cab. It is not the shot but the seconds after that begins change for criminal investigator CJ Hand. Beset with his recent loss and pent-up anger he takes leave from a tangled bureaucratic mess. Trying to find self-worth he agrees to help friends by probing the accidental drowning of a friend's son. The image of an uncomplicated investigation is quickly shattered. CJ encounters a maze of deadly circles surrounding the death. He begins unwinding hidden tentacles of political power and personal greed gripping Elm Creek valley. Affecting his personal life are two intellectual and intuitive women who help him come to grips with what he has been running from, or toward, for a decade.DEADLY CIRCLES is a fast-paced novel exposing the ugly underbelly of insidious criminal activity.

The animal stench triggers Dawn's gag reflex. The constant grinding of stone on stone irritably attacks her frayed nerves, and then it abruptly stops. Odd scratching sounds echo in her half-conscious state. She pulls herself into a sitting position and stares at a cage door. She gasps at the thing peering into her eyes. A year before CJ Hand arrives as the new instructor at Loess Hills Community College, the former instructor disappears. Local law enforcement seeks help from the Department of Justice, but the Federal investigators run into problems and ask CJ to lend his expertise with the strange case involving native plants. On finding the miraculous plant in question, he launches into the geocaching world at meteoric speed. The geocache note, written in riddles, places him in the grip of matching wits with a killer. Complicating the case is his summer class beginning in two weeks. The new dean adds to his mental and physical stress by suggesting CJ is in violation of his teaching contract. Time is against him and his cohorts working the missing person case, Tom Thies, and Dr. Trisha Baker.How does a small reptilian creature and an oddly named plant figure into the tormentor's game? CJ is thrust into a world of pharmaceutical collusion with death defying odds.