Books, Stories, & Anthologies
"Come," said the cat. "They summon you."
It shamed him, hearing the thoughts of beasts.
"It is time," said the cat.
"No," he said.
Suddenly, though, imperial constables hunted him. He didn't know why. He fled up the river, into the great forest, his only guides this cat and a feckless dog.
He discovered that, before his birth, he'd been selected for a mission. Bred for it. He resented it.
And, in the forest, an unseen Presence, immensely powerful, had gripped him. He must do its will.
He decided on a mission of his own: to become free.
WHEN THE WASP STINGS
Cooper North is called back as prosecutor, to deal with bizarre events.
An alligator is scaring shoppers on Main Street. Psychopaths costumed as Ninjas go on a commando-knife killing binge. Yellow-jacket wasps hidden in an allergic maple-syrup entrepeneur's jacket sleeves--a murder.
Cooper is sixty-nine, tall, almost gaunt, with the eyes of a falcon--she sees you, and she sees into you. On the hunt, she's relentless.
This time Cooper and her police colleagues most sort through a collection of odd characters, as they follow twisting trails. And then Cooper finds herself facing the greatest danger of her life.
You won't guess the end.
The Girl Who Got Her Tiger On is the story 17-year-old Emmeline Pinski tells, about what happened to her when she was only twelve--creepy new neighbors moved in, and she got suspicious.
She finds they're felons. Nobody can do anything about their stealing, and even murder, because there's no hard evidence. Emmeline decides to get that evidence--what she gets is big-time trouble.
She's in terrible danger.
Star Nose is the second novel in the Cooper North mystery series.
Star Nose is about a frightened child. They murdered his mother, and now the killers hunt him. Cooper North just retired as a prosecutor, but she's still in the game, and she offers the child haven. He trusts no one, however. In his fear, he clings to Cooper's housemate, Henry, a Pembroke Welsh corgi, and Henry understands. All the while, though, the killers come closer, and this seven-year-old has no hope. Star Nose will haunt you.
In this thriller, a Silicon Valley whiz-kid buys a Caribbean island, and immediately blacks it out, raising intelligence agency eyebrows. They send in Willie Deane, undercover. He finds white-sand beaches, palms...and murder. Why are workers in the research facility, the Sugar Cube, one by one, pushed out of a Black Hawk helicopter, or fed to the island's feral Bengal tiger? And why is the next target Willie Deane?
This was not a good place to be....
After a moment, I realized we were caged, staring out through iron bars. Defion stood outside the cage, insect faced, no expression. Philip Prester stood beside him, but with his back to us, looking out over the plain. Windblown orange dust sandpapered my face. I felt a buzz inside my head, and knew the dust did that, as if it was electrically charged. After a few moments, I didn't notice it.
"Where's this?" I said, mainly to hear my own voice, something familiar.
Defion surprised me: he spoke.
"Sinnabar," he said.
Rush him? Then stab her cane into his stomach?
No, he’d get his finger on the trigger before she ever got to him. And he wouldn’t miss, not at this distance.
Run out the door? She’d get the bullet in her back.
An alien visitor gets sloppy drunk on Diet Pepsi.
At the OK Corral, old-west spellslingers fire off incantations.
Ancients from the Cretaceous emerge from Manhattan's subways.
A scientist riles a Florida swamp shaman, and never sees the magic coming.
Hunting a renegade, intercosmic rangers take the form of professional wrestlers.
And then....
Is fact really stranger than fiction? Not in these fifteen stories.
.Pleistocene witches herd saber-toothed tigers
.An alien lands in New Hampshire and gets drunk on diet Pepsi
.A troubadour won't listen to his much smarter dog and trouble ensues
.In the far future, unearthed relics of a Fifties rock-and-roll star inspire a new religion
....and eleven other stories from the farthest reaches of the imaginable.
From the Mesozoic, this quick-read e-story leaps to our time, a homeless encampment in Manhattan's subways--green-eyed strangers, up from even deeper down, seek Marten, a genius pickpocket, but he's a "cannon," he "dips" solo, and he means to keep it that way.
In a serene town in the Vermont mountains, who strangled the college student from Italy?
Cooper North is a retired prosecutor and judge. She has a bad leg and just wants to watch birds. Yet, it's she who must find the murderer, even if it means putting her own life at risk.
A comic novella--
If your dog's a genius, shouldn't you do what he says?