John J. Asher

A piercing new novel from the award-winning author of A Dignified Exit When James Martin's father kills James's mother and commits suicide, the Claybern family takes the orphaned ten-year-old in-against their young daughter Jilly's wishes. All James Martin wants is a normal life, free of the stigma of his father's actions and consequent blackouts from which he wakes totally disoriented and terrified of what he might have done. His worst fears are realized when as a young adult he awakens in a sleazy hotel room to find a young boy tied to a chair, a body on the floor, and a bloody tire tool in his hand. It's hard enough for Jilly in rural West Texas, as she has a rare genetic condition similar to albinism, but with tints of skin tone and pale otherworldly blue eyes. Jilly is obsessed with reclaiming the prestige her family lost when her father read an "evil omen" in a tub of hog guts and took to his bed, never to work again. When Jilly eventually has an opportunity to make serious money, she is faced with a moral dilemma: just how far is she willing to go to get it? Can either James or Jilly live a normal life, at peace with themselves or each other in this coming-of-age novel set in drought-stricken West Texas in the 1940s and '50s?

Asher has produced a persuasive portrait of a young artist's passage to manhood, filled with unobtrusively evocative descriptions and characterizations. -Kirkus Review In this saga marked by discovery and disillusionment, Harley Buchanan wants out of the hardscrabble life of his family, and out of the heartbreaking discovery of his high school sweetheart with another boy. He hitches out of Separation, Texas, headed for art school and the culture of 1960s New York City. But he can't leave his past behind as easily as he left Texas. A shocking discovery ignites a bloodlust that makes him risk everything he's achieved and propels him on a mission of revenge back to Texas, and the seedy underbelly of Ciudad Acu a, Mexico, where he finally confronts the obsession that has crippled his entire life.

In this literary noir thriller, former government agent Robert Bohnert has left the life behind-but it won't leave him. Broken by the destruction of his family, he agrees to one last job-this time for the other side. When a "straightforward" diamond smuggling operation goes south-literally-Bohnert finds himself trekking through Mexico, pursued by killers, including, a cross-dressing hit man, a psycho meth addict, and a fellow operative who was once a close friend. An unlikely love story complicates his flight when the woman who defects from his pursuers becomes the one person who might offer him salvation. The question becomes, ultimately, will they make it out of Mexico alive, and does the canister really contain diamonds, or is Robert being used to import an unimaginable horror into the U.S.? "...(K)ill a few hours enjoying the suspense and human drama." - Publishers Weekly

Finalist for Best Literary Fiction - (eFestival of Words). Monroe Colson, a successful children's book illustrator living in small-town Texas, baffles family and friends when he unceremoniously announces he's moving to Mexico, ostensibly to paint. In Mexico, the true nature of his mysterious behavior not only comes to light, but takes an unexpected turn when he runs into a vibrant young American woman who has been abandoned, penniless, by her fianc . This emotionally powerful and often humorous story with its controversial resolution is a poignant testament to love and the resilience of the human heart.