A lost soul struggling to find the light . . .
A mother’s retribution . . .
A woman’s misguided faith . . .
A much-needed lesson . . .
A nagging gone wrong . . .
Five tales that peer into lives about to split wide open.

Includes:
EMPTY SHELLS AND BROKEN STONES
AND THEN SHE WAS DEAD
EGGSTREME MEASURES
IN THE ARMS OF THE SEA
SWALLOWING THE SERPENT’S TAIL

When Cal is “sentenced” to spend her summer outside with a bunch of gawky kids and stinky cows, she’s certain there is no worse punishment. Life without her computer is no life at all. All her friends, at least the ones that matter, are online. There’s no one in the real world Cal wants to spend time with. Until she meets Troy. But he’s not in the real world either. Or is he?

Phyllis Carlson hates gizmos, gadgets, and anything techno. She keeps her entire world as uncluttered by technology as possible, not an easy feat in the 2060’s. But when someone murders her best friend, Phyllis faces the technology she despises head on in order to bring the murderous fiend to justice.

There are things in the sky. Lights suddenly appear and then wink out of sight. Strange-shaped objects streak across a plane’s path. We know they are here. They know they are here. Only two questions remain: What do they want? And what are we going to do about it?

When Leroy’s brother, a crack WWII ace fighter pilot, disappears overseas, Leroy is determined to figure out what happened. What Leroy doesn’t count on is help — from a very unexpected source.

Everyone wants a little magic in their lives, don’t they? Everyone, that is, except the guy Gerold’s been sent to bring back to magic school. Can Gerold save the day and convince the cowboy to come back with him? Or are Gerold’s dreams of a post-elementary education as ephemeral as the cowboy’s magic?

Co-dependency tangles with misconceptions in this tale about good intentions gone horribly wrong.

When Faith Morgan’s baby is murdered, Faith loses touch with reality. Grief and depression spin her into an ever-widening black hole from which the only escape is her own destruction. Rescued by a friend who sends Faith to a sanctuary on the west coast, she finally finds a path back to the world of the living, a path that is violently torn asunder by a sudden winter storm and a baby’s fearful cry.

From the eternal sea she rose – a tattered, lifeless husk – with but one solitary purpose: to take the soul of the one who condemned her.

The outcasts of Society, the freaks and the monsters, shamed and beaten into submission, know that Good doesn’t always triumph over Evil. When a little girl’s life hangs in the balance, however, the question doesn’t hinge on right or wrong, but on whether or not such an outcast—cocooned in darkness that exists halfway between fear and despair—can step into the light and take action.

When Hiram Randall finds a corpse in his bathtub all he wants is to make it go away, but the cops are determined to pin the murder on him and so is his shrimpy neighbor. Can Hiram con his way out of this sticky situation? Or will his wife’s research pull the plug on his not-so-soggy story?