The following is an excerpt from chapter one of "Clean." Darla, the protagonist, is experiencing a flashback as she cleans a client's house. She looked at the wall to the right side of the bed. Another secret panel hid there, protecting the Parson’s safe and family photo albums. Unlike those in bank robber movies, the safe wasn't anything special. Every so often, she’d peruse the photographs of long-dead Parson ancestors. Occasionally, Darla would find a new, crisply developed photo of the couple off on European adventures or relaxing Caribbean cruises. A life she would never know. Still, even hiding spots needed dusting. It'll be fine. They're not back till Friday. I'll get it tomorrow; got to hurry before I miss sunset, she thought as she approached the bed. The Parson’s bed was not a simple turn-down affair; it was a ceremony, a sacrament to the home. Once, she’d forgotten to make it. Darla remembered the sound of Silvia Parson shouting her name through the house. She remembered rushing into the room, sure she was about to be fired. “Does this bed look made, maid?” “No, ma’am.” The woman’s beady eyes had narrowed as she looked around the room. "How much are we paying you, dear?" Mrs. Parson asked as she walked around the bed. "Five dollars per cleaning for four cleanings per week,” Darla answered quickly. "And how much would it cost for daily cleaning? We expect to be here quite often with our office opening downtown. It might become a permanent move in a couple of years once we’re up and running. You’ll find my husband is fond of his dinner parties.” Silvia stopped, just inches away from her. “We wish to explore more of the culture here. You Carolinians are so simple, simple tastes and simple pleasures. Such a pleasant change from the hustle and bustle of D.C. So, how much for you to come here and clean every day?" Darla was floored as she ran the calculations in her head. "Every day, ma'am?" she asked. “Every day, dear.” “Um- that’s…” Silvia Parson interrupted. "Are you a religious woman, Darla?" "I was raised Catholic, but no longer practice ma'am." "Then you will take off Christmas and Easter. Do you require more?" "I visit a friend in Florida for a week each summer." A fraction of a wrinkle split between Mrs. Parson’s eyebrows, "Christmas, Easter, and one week in the summer. Is that all, dear?" “Oh! And my birthday.” Darla blurted. Mrs. Parson narrowed into slits. “Christmas, Easter, one week in summer, and your birthday, and when is your birthday, dear?” Her voice seemed to grow colder with every question. “The fourteenth of April, ma’am. My birthday will land on Easter in two years, so I’ll get one less day off that year.” Darla had memorized her birthdays against all future corresponding holidays. “An unfortunate pairing,” Mrs. Parson said coolly. “I don’t mind sharing my birthday with the big guy in the sky, ma’am,” Darla smiled; Mrs. Parson did not. “So-” The woman took a long breath and rattled off, “Christmas, Easter, your birthday unless the two coincide, and one week in summer. Do I have that correct?” The sentence sounded more like a deliberation than a question. Darla nodded. The woman took a step closer. She had known Mrs. Parson was short, but up this close, Darla stood a solid half-head taller. “And the price?” “Fifty dollars a week.” Darla held her breath. You blew it! That’s too high, way too high! Silvia shrugged, "How does eighty dollars a week sound? For all seven days. I know the demand for good help in this neighborhood. All these women here think their reputations can buy them whatever they want; I disagree. Think of this as your retainer. I’m asking that you prioritize this house; if I call, you come running. Eighty dollars a week." Darla was dumbfounded; that was almost triple any of her other clients. She blinked and had the mindfulness to close her mouth as she nodded. "Yes, ma'am. That sounds good. I'll get right to that bed," she said, raising her hand in the small space between them. "Yes. Please do, dear." The woman said, taking Darla’s hand. She remembered Mrs. Parson’s fingers being so cold, like wrinkly icicles. That conversation had been a high point in Darla's career. The steady cash flow had been going straight to her vehicle savings account, and she was getting close to her goal. Fluffing the final pillow, she placed it gingerly on the bed. Taking a step back, she examined the bedframe that towered above the mattress like a wooden ribcage. The entire bedroom had taken her twenty minutes-ish to complete. She picked up her rag and walked over to a handle protruding from the wall by the hall door. The laundry chute was another hidden favorite of Darla’s, and it saved her from countless trips to the basement washing machine. She pulled the handle, and the hatch fell open. A cool draft pushed its way up the shaft and felt good against her skin. She used the chute for more than just laundry, dropping everything from spent cleaning supplies to empty liquor bottles into the basket below. Darla dangled her torn cleaning rag over the chute and let go. She waited for the soft thwap. It never came. The breeze from the chute stopped blowing. The hair on her neck stood up as Darla squinted into the dark opening. Must’ve gotten stuck. Darla tip-toed forward and leaned into the chute. The drop was just as dark as the hallway. She saw nothing, no glow from the basement lights that were always on. Absolute, eye-pressing darkness. She leaned further, grasping the walls on either side. Something moved down the chute, shifting sideways in the dark. Darla jerked back. A crash came from the room behind her, and she screamed. Careening into the bedroom, Darla spun and flailed her arms against the invisible intruder. I’m dead; I’m gonna die!

I knew—because Mom was involved—that my first car-buying experience would be painful, but I couldn’t imagine how close it would come to killing me. Dad was a professor of mathematics at Boston University and probably never held a torque wrench in his life, whereas Mom grew up in Grandpa’s repair shop and could tune up an engine by the time she turned eight. Meaning there wasn’t any question who would “help” me pick out my twenty-first birthday gift. We set out in her shiny, hatteras blue Cadillac Seville on a Saturday morning in October. You would’ve thought Mom was going to the symphony, not a used car dealership. For her, every excursion was an excuse to dress up. She wore a light wool coat for the fall weather, a hat that was popular at the time—shaped like an upside down dog food bowl—and high heels. She pulled into Pro Ride on Washington Street first, but when the salesman gave her a sideways glance and asked where her husband was, we drove away. We went to Best Value Used Cars next but burned rubber on our way out after the salesman began explaining how the carburetor worked to Mom, who certainly hadn’t asked him. I was wishing I could have gone alone or even with Dad, who couldn’t tell a Chevy from a Datsun, when we sidled into the third place, Manny’s in Pembroke. I winced at Manny’s signature billboard with the slogan, “Prices that will blow your mind.” The artwork pictured seven or eight people from the neck up wearing shocked expressions, which wasn’t surprising given their heads were blown open at the top, with smoke and flames coming out of them. “Classy, Mom,” I said. “Hush.” “Can you ignore the salesman’s comments this time?” “I don’t trust any business that condescends to women,” she said. I sighed and followed her inside the showroom, where a young man who looked not much older than me approached. At first he reminded me of that Jehovah’s Witness guy who, when he came to our house the year before with a brochure, Mom slammed the door in his face. Like him, the salesman was clean-shaven, his hair was parted like he took a ruler to it, and he wore a suit and tie. In those days, not like now, there would’ve been a dress code on the job, especially if you were in sales. The slick outfit couldn’t hide that the salesman was a hunk as we used to say, with black hair, broad shoulders, and a mischievous smile that made me go all melty inside. Don’t say anything to demean women, I quietly prayed. “We’re looking for something reliable and reasonably priced for my daughter’s first car.” Mom gave him a fierce look that challenged him to question her qualifications as anyone’s car advisor. Thank god he didn’t. Instead, he introduced himself and offered us coffee. Unlike the previous two salesmen, he made polite conversation by complimenting Mom on the Seville and asking if I was in college. When I told him I had graduated, he asked what kind of work I would be looking for. I said something along the lines of, “I love art.” “He means a career, Viola,” Mom said. “She took computer classes. It will probably be a job related to that.” She made it clear she wasn’t interested in chitchat by leading us back outside. As we walked behind Mom, the salesman asked what kind of art I liked. “Murals are my favorite.” Remembering I had a photo of one I worked on in college, I pulled it out of my purse to show him. “That’s really powerful. You’re very talented.” His words caused a sort of glow to spread through me, though I understood he might just be buttering me up for the sale. “How big is it?” he asked. Mom’s disapproving glance silenced us and reminded the salesman to get back to business. “What kind of car are you looking for?” he said. I jumped in before Mom had a chance. “A VW Beetle.” I had spotted an adorable red one when we turned into the lot. Mom was aghast. “A Beetle?” Its shade had drawn my eye like a pyromaniac to flame. Crimson was the color of sunsets, roses, and revolution. It would perfectly encapsulate my image of myself as nature lover, artist, and nonconformist. Plus the car was small enough not to tax my parallel parking skills. “The red one is in terrific condition. Hardly any miles on it.” The salesman turned toward where it was parked. I matched his pace with enthusiasm, but now Mom trailed behind. A moment later she paused and said, “I’d like to take a look at this Dodge Dart.” I followed her gaze to a puke green car that strongly resembled whatever Grandma owned and sometimes drove through town at fifteen miles per hour. A flicker of apology flashed in the salesman’s expression before he shifted his attention to Mom. He must’ve been sure he’d lose his job if he didn’t follow the most likely source of payment. “The Dart received a perfect five-star rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” Mom said. “I like the Volkswagen better,” I said. “The Beetle has a good reputation for safety too,” the salesman hedged. Mom ordered me over to the Dart and insisted I look inside. The salesman opened the door and showed us its features. “Would you like to take it for a test drive?” “Yes,” Mom said. We took turns driving around the block, then Mom popped open the hood to examine the engine compartment. While she questioned the salesman about everything from gas mileage to when the tires were last rotated, I wandered over to stare at the red Bug. It had a soft gray cloth interior and a decal of a dove on the dashboard. Mom came from behind and put an arm around me. The salesman hung back, giving us privacy to discuss the purchase. “The Dart is in good condition and I managed to talk the price down,” Mom said. “I know you like the VW, but they have some issues. Poor safety features, limited crash protection… the engines aren’t very powerful, the car handles poorly at higher speeds, there are concerns about its electrical systems… and they have rust problems.” She pointed out a small section of rust behind the right rear fender. “I love the color,” was all I had. “Reminds me of the lollipops you always picked at the doctor’s office,” she said. Her statement had the intended effect of establishing who was the child here. I bowed to her sound reasoning and agreed to let her purchase the Dart. When we turned back to the salesman, he was staring at an older man in a plaid suit who gave him a come-back-here wave through the showroom window. “Can we go to the office now?” the salesman asked us. “I’d like to get a picture first. It will just take a moment.” Mom kept albums of photos marking first events, like when my brother and I took our first steps, ate solid food, said our first words, started school, and on and on. Since this was the first car buying event, it would be important to include the salesman. She positioned herself to the side to get the full length of the car in the photo, while the salesman and I were to stand by the driver’s door shaking hands on the deal. “Sorry about my mom,” I said under my breath. The moment could not have been more awkward, with me feeling ridiculous and him looking worried, watching the man in plaid come out the door and head toward us with furious steps. The rest is a blur. There was the vroom of an engine, and the sight of a car speeding toward us. The feel of myself being yanked to the side and landing briefly in the salesman’s arms. The sound of an explosion, the stench of burning oil. The confusion of police and EMTs arriving, directing us out of the way and arresting the driver who miraculously stumbled out of his fractured car. The flash of a photographer’s camera—not Mom’s this time—taking our pictures. My mother remained frozen across from me, her mouth open in an expression of horror. No doubt she was imagining what could’ve happened if I hadn’t been whisked out of the way. We learned later that the intended victim had been our salesman, who was also a manager despite his youth and had recently fired the driver of the car that nearly obliterated us. While we were on the lot, the ex-employee had called the dealership, threatening to kill his former manager. Police had been notified, and the older salesman had tried to wave our guy back into the showroom without jeopardizing the sale, naturally. The dealership offered to gift us another Dodge Dart, matching the one that was totaled in every way, right down to the puke green color. I tried to convince Mom the car was a bad omen—she fully believed in signs and omens—but she was so delighted over the prospect of a free car, she insisted the Dart actually saved our lives. Her explanation was that posing in front of it had allowed the salesman to be looking in the direction of the approaching murderous car. In exchange for their generosity, we had to sign a document pledging never to sue them for our having almost been killed on their lot. And I experienced the thrill of owning a vehicle that gave me flashes of PTSD every time I climbed into it. I ask myself now, if I’d been more assertive and insisted on that funky, free-spirited Bug, would I still have ended up here—forty-two years later—questioning whether it’s all too late to begin again?

STORY STATEMENT shorter.docx

Prior to the birth of Grace, a young couple named Mary and Angelo met and fell in love during WWII, in a combated and destroyed tiny island of Gozo, Malta, which floats in the center of the Mediterranean, and is filled with mystical history and magic. During the war, Malta was one of the most central English colonies of destruction. To say it was decimated, is being kind. Everyone wanted this jewel in the sea, the most perfect entry point into Europe with Africa and the Middle east not being too far away. Once the devastating war was over, and Angelo was able to return back to the love of his life Mary from his time at sea while serving on war ships, he took her hand in marriage and the two began their life together. Severe poverty was their reality, but they believed their love could survive anything. The two found a small room to dwell in, over a small bakery that used their hot stone oven continuously, allowing for a very hot accommodation, but with options being limited with what little they had, they made due. Angelo would leave spontaneously and continuously to work on the ships for months, turning into years at a time, but Mary always waited for her husband and kept her spirits high, as much as she could with the help of her sisters. On Angelo’s last return home, short lived as it was, for three continuous nights the two made love, not being able to keep away from one another for a moment. They engulfed their selves in one another, their passion in spite of all reason was consuming and liberating. They lavished in it, taking very little time to bathe or eat, not wanting to waste a second apart. As long as they tried to delay the inevitable, of course like every good thing it came quickly to an end and once again, Mary was crying at the dock waving fervently at her husband as he sailed away into the distant sunset. As he waved back and yelled over the loud ship's engines, she heard him say that he promised to be back as soon as he could. Her tears ran quick and hard against her pale soft face and in that moment, she thought she would never stop crying until she sat with her sister Paula and confided that she didn’t know how much more of this she could take. Every visit was shorter and shorter and every time away at sea, became longer and longer. What was once two months, turned now to nearly a year. Angelo would send money back home to Mary, but it was taking longer to arrive and was less amounts each time, due to work shortages and less hours actually working. Paula promised to help and with that vow, slowly Mary’s solemness turned to joy. A month later, Mary began to feel ill at the most inopportune times. She was cleaning for some extra money now and doing errands as best she could for the bakery below her. At times she was permitted to assist in their baking tasks, once she learned the basics. Paula was a friend of the shop owners and convinced her to let Mary work a few hours for extra pay, as a favor to her husband John who was influential in their village. As Mary quickly caught on, the shop owner began to give her more work and this was great to keep her mind off of her agonizing broken heart, and her morale up. Mary enjoyed her time working in the bakery, until the smells out of nowhere, started to nauseate her. Every morning, her nausea became more and more intolerable, until her nausea turned into uncontrollable vomiting. One morning, without any notice, a smell of garlic bread spread throughout the bakery as Mary entered and without a minute to react, she turned her head instinctively and began to vomit all over the freshly washed floor, angering the shop owner who fired her instantly. Depressed and ill, Mary ran to her sister Paula for guidance and care, as she was at a loss to where her illness came from and why it was so persistent and not going away. As she ran to Paula’s home and banged on the door, with first glance at Mary’s white washed face, Paula knew without hesitation that her illness was morning sickness and that Mary was pregnant. Sitting her down, giving her a cup of tea and what Mary determined was kindness, Paula shocked Mary with the truth that she was most likely expecting and with that acknowledgment she quickly also added, as was she. The two sisters were both expecting at the same time, Paula’s second child and Mary’s first. Paula was five years older than Mary, but the two were married only two years apart. In shock, Mary’s only response was to get up and hug her sister as the tears ran down her face and slowly leave, as at that time she craved her solace and her bed. The thought of having a baby alone terrified her to her core. Returning back to her small room, alone and afraid, Mary crawled into her bed and allowed herself to digest the new reality that at twenty-one years old, she would become a mother. At once, a feeling she never had felt before crept in and thoughts that scared her engulfed her. In that moment she realized, she did not want to be a mother. She did not want a child, let alone to raise a child by herself. Desperately, she looked around the room to see if she could make herself lose the baby and with that thought, she grabbed some liquor left by her husband that she had saved for him and finished the bottle along with the last few aspirin pills she had on hand, hoping that she would poison her fetus and the baby would die. ******************************* Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. At seven months pregnant, the thoughts of that night still brought a tremor throughout her body, at the realization that she tried to murder her own baby. As she clung to her belly, she profusely apologized to her growing child, begging for forgiveness to both her baby and to God himself for saving her child from her immature reaction to the news of her pregnancy. Terrified of any repercussions, Mary always kept that secret to herself and never divulged those thoughts of murder that had been something that had never crossed her mind before, or maybe calling it murder is being dramatic, but at the time that is all Mary could relate to. These thoughts were triggers to her childhood trauma, but as the pregnancy continued, she pushed those traumas down and tried to continue with life and be optimistic especially since a larger than usual check had arrived from overseas, along with the news that her husband was enroute back to her and would be home before the birth of his first child. This gave her hope that things would work out the way they were meant to. Mary realized, that this baby would save her marriage, this baby would be the reason that Angelo would always return back to her and with that thought, protecting her unborn child was her priority. Paula had now delivered her child, a second daughter, disappointed and saddened by that realization as her own husband had demanded that she birth him a boy. He quickly dismissed her girls and divulged his time with mistresses and whisky; anything to be away from his wife, this a secret she kept to herself. One day during afternoon lunch, Mary had disclosed prior to Paula’s child being born, that if she would have a girl, she planned to name her Grace. Paula did not like the thought that Mary would give her child the name of their mother. Since her daughter was born first, she gave that name to her baby girl, assuming Mary would choose another name. Paula felt entitled and presumed the right to their mother’s name was her first choice, as she was the eldest child. ****************************** On the week of her due date, Mary was elated when Angelo finally made it home in time to prepare for the birth, as he had promised. Paula, who had been her mentor and confident had been helping Mary prepare, all the while caring for her own little ones essentially alone. Her husband had been sleeping away and coming home on rare occasions only to drop off money and supplies and to keep up the pretense of being happily married, in hopes his parents wouldn’t find out his misery of being married to a woman he detested. John feared that if his parents knew the truth about the status of his relationship, he would lose his ever-growing inheritance and allowance that allowed him to live a life of debauchery and of great wealth. His friendships were with the elite, servants waited on him and his friends in all kinds of pleasure. These men, most like John, lived double lives successfully and boastfully. They all had grand homes and were dignified in their village and took pride in essentially running most of the essential businesses and in privilege posts of government as well, used to all their advantages. On the day that Grace was to be born, Paula was in great distress and her jealousy of watching Angelo doting on his wife while in labor, gave her feelings of hatred for her sister that even she couldn’t understand. It was clear as day though, Mary with what little she had, had more than Paula ever dreamed of having. Choosing to marry a man for stability and wealth, forfeited her the luxury of experiencing true love, and at that moment, this realization stabbed her chest with severity that she could never love her sister the same way again. Paula had to be honest with at least herself; if she really allowed herself to look back in time, she never loved Mary and was always jealous of her and deep down only loved the fact that Mary was and always would be beneath her. Paula loved the feeling of superiority, she never loved Mary. Things always seemed to come easier to Mary then Paula, without sacrifices. This wasn’t fair. Mary needed to be punished and learn what it meant to earn her way in life. Paula at that moment recalled when a hungry and poor Mary came to her door, nearly nine months pregnant at dinner time, as Paula was making Rabbit stew, a Maltese delicacy, and the aromas that filled her kitchen were fragrant and mouthwatering. Mary upon entering the home, had a whiff of the smell of the stew and quickly ran to her sister’s kitchen, in hopes of having a taste as she hadn’t eaten all day and was exhausted from her cleaning duties. Paula saw Mary at her kitchen entrance, nearly salivating while walking towards her pot of stew. Paula pushed her away and said she was sorry, but there was just enough for her family and couldn’t spare a spoonful She asked Mary to leave at once, as she would be serving dinner for her husband who was finally home and her children. Truth be told, there was enough food to feed three families in that pot, but Paula refused to allow Mary a taste, in retrospect due to her underlying jealousy of the woman who was about to have everything in life that Paula would never have, the love of a man. As Mary graciously retreated out of the kitchen towards the door, she touched her throat to savor the final sweet smell of the stew and cried to herself as she ate the last piece of bread and cheese she had saved from breakfast, as that was all she could ration for the day to save money for the impending child’s birth and all the supplies she would need for then, to ensure her baby would have what was needed to survive. With one final yell, Paula was snapped back into her current reality, as she watched Mary push her baby out, and with a gasp, Angelo cried out, “IT’S A GIRL!” Paula was relieved that it was a girl and not a boy, because she knew John would have thrown that fact in her face, that her sister can bore a boy and something was obviously wrong with her. In that realization, Paula expected to see a disappointed look on Angelo’s face but was surprised to see tears of joy streaming down his face as he held his daughter and kissed his wife, while the nurse maid continued with pushing out the placenta from Mary’s womb and stitched her up with no freezing. Mary whimpered in pain, containing her agony as the joy of that moment over powered it. She was the happiest she had ever felt with her husband and child by her side. They were now a family. A true, bonded family and this was more than she could have dreamed of. She never wanted this feeling to fade. Paula sat away from the couple, giving them space to themselves, but also angered at the scene before her. The jealousy she had felt previously was nothing like the envy she felt now. This child was the root cause of it. This child could not be, she had to destroy her! Mary could not have the perfect life with a man who loved her and a child he loved. As her thoughts raged in her head, she was brought to a standstill when Angelo introduced the baby to Paula. “This is Grace. Grace Carmen Rose.” At a loss for words, she held the child and a feeling of hatred filled her heart as she looked at the baby’s perfectly round face and big brown eyes, with blond hair and in perfect health. She scoured to see if there were any impurities on the baby and her eyes quickly fell on her throat area, where the signs of a birth mark that looked like the face of a rabbit was visible to the naked eye. That sight brought back the memory of the rabbit stew her sister had craved and she had denied and it brought a devious smile across her devilish face, which gave Angelo a startle. An uncomfortable feeling was at the pit of his stomach; his instinct was to grab his daughter away from Paula that instant, but he did not and instead watched intently her behavior, knowing something was definitely off. “Grace? That’s what I named my daughter, I thought maybe you would’ve selected another name, right Mary?” Mary looked back at her sister, confused. “Why would I select another name? I told you that was the name I was planning on giving my child, if I had a girl.” Paula tried to hide her seething anger; she forced a smile upon her rigid face, that always seem to wore an indented frown; this feature she passed on to her children and decided best way to win this round was to kill her opponent with guilt. “Oh, I just thought since my child was named Grace, you would’ve picked something else, but I guess you couldn’t allow me the honor after all I’ve done for you...” Angelo, now upset at the manipulation and utter disrespect Paula showed towards his wife interrupted the discussion and wouldn't allow his sister-in-law to take away their joy on this day for another second. He knew he had to keep his guard up with her going forward. “Her name is Grace, but thanks for coming, we’re good going forward. I’m back and have taken a leave for a while so we won’t bother you anymore, thank you again.” Angelo pushed Paula out the door and closed it sharply behind her, as he rushed to his wife to console her obvious upset. The two vowed that they were a family now and everyone else was just noise. Others expectations were theirs to deal with and that was of no concern to them any longer. The baby was planned to be named Grace and that is the name she would have. Little did they know at that moment, what was set into motion, would become a curse that would be passed on for generations to come, as Paula behind the slammed door also declared her own vow. “This child will not be! I’ll have to figure out a strong enough herb to kill the baby. If Angelo thinks he’ll dictate to me, the nerve! He’ll pay the price so heavily, he’ll be forced to leave and never return back with my spells! Mary may have gotten lucky with this kid, but once I rid the world of her, I’ll ensure that my curses will leave Mary unable to have another child ever again. This I decree and declare” As hard as she tried, her declarations and decrees went unheard to whatever spirits she planned to evoke; nothing went as she had planned. Within the next 16 years, Mary had successfully birthed six children including a son, which Paula could never succeed in doing. Paula was only able to interfere with one pregnancy and ended it before Mary’s second trimester, a few short months after Grace’s birth. Every other pregnancy, Paula’s curses were less detrimental; not because of anything she was doing different, but because Mary’s strength fought off any entity after that loss. Her spirit was strong and her faith even stronger, relying on prayer to get her out of any situation. Several years after her twisted plot was set into motion, Paula’s chance of revenge finally fell right into her lap. Mary became untouchable, she was essentially a lost cause; but someone else was perfect prey and that someone was Grace! More importantly, it was Grace’s descendants that would change the trajectory of everyone’s future, till death did them part and lest we forget, Paula put it all into motion.

You read that right. According to Emma Kantor at Publishers Weekly, the estate of Ellen Raskin, the Newbury Award-winning author of The Westing Game who died in 1984 at age 56, has been acquired by the group International Literary Properties. The organization has confirmed that there are two unpublished mystery novels in Raskin’s papers, another standalone puzzle mystery called A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese, and a sequel to the greatest children’s mystery novel of all time, The Westing Game. The agent for the Raskin estate, John Silbersack of the Best Agency, notes “We are not only three years shy of the 50th anniversary of The Westing Game, but also of the 100th anniversary of Ellen’s birth, so what better time to begin preparation for what we hope will be an extended celebration?” I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. Silbersack notes that the manuscripts are still technically unfinished, meaning the Estate is looking for collaborators to help polish them up. “…She had been working on—and had very nearly completed—a marvelous new story, very much in the vein of The Westing Game, titled A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese. Ellen’s practice was to rewrite and re-edit each prior chapter on the completion of a new chapter, so the earliest sections of the book were pored over time and again, while the very final chapters were more sketched out…. Ellen’s daughter, Susan, devoted herself to ‘solving’ the mystery and tying up all the loose ends, and the manuscript awaits a final polish and a worthy collaborator to bring it to a finale, which is at the top of our to-do list.” He added, regarding the Westing Game sequel, “Crafting a follow-up to one of the most beloved titles of all time is no small task. In conjunction with ILP, we’re currently in the process of bringing in another iconic middle grade author to work with us on this eagerly anticipated literary event. Watch this space!” We will watch it, indeed. I cannot overstate the significance of this find. As I wrote in October 2020, analyzing The Westing Game as a ghost story, …”In The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino wrote about how The Westing Game satirizes capitalism in America, analyzing the deceased figurehead in the vein of another (real) Wisconsin immigrant-turned-industrialist, John Michael Kohler, whose belief in the American Dream was his undoing. She also reads the novel as a commentary on the death of Howard Hughes, whose own passing in 1976 (the year Raskin began writing the novel) brought about a will contestation that shocked the nation, with a fraudulent heir making a play for a chunk of his fortune. “In 2018, Columbia University English professor and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Public Books Nicholas Dames analyzed another facet, writing for that publication about The Westing Game’s complex experiments with form—packed full of riddles and puzzles, it is a novel that you must play, a game that you must read. “But it’s so much more, too. It folds and unfolds its stories, rearranges the alliances and alignment of its sixteen main characters, rather like a Rubik’s Cube. Containing multitudes, it can become an entirely new thing, when looked at from a new angle. It is a murder mystery, a tribute to American labor history, a farcical indictment of capitalism, a book of riddles, a large-scale family drama, a bildungsroman, etc. And it is also, in its way, a ghost story. But not a kind of ghost story you’ve ever read before.” I first read The Westing Game late, in Middle School. I first heard of it in fifth grade, but never got around to reading it. I picked it up, a little older, because I was curious about what I had missed. And, it is not an overstatement to say that it changed my life. My sister and I read The Westing Game every year, and we still find things that we never noticed, clues we never found before. It is the eternal puzzle, an enormous, complex, joyful mystery. Even without a sequel, it continues on and on and on. But that doesn’t mean we won’t eagerly await the next installment, when it finally comes out. View the full article

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, reports of crimes attributed to ghosts abounded in mainstream newspapers. But few of these stories garnered fervent attention like the mystery of a farmhouse just outside Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Headlines such as “Fairies and Imps Invade Hills of Antigonish Co.,” “Ghost Is Charged With Many Crimes,” and “Haunted House Terrors Grow, Baffle Watch” entertained readers across the U.S. and Canada. Alexander MacDonald had built the house in 1887. He lived there with his wife Janet and their adopted teenaged daughter Mary Ellen. Around 1912, strange events began to plague the farm. Balls of light floated through the air. Banging noises emanated from the house. Doors refused to open. People struggled to breathe. Unseen hands released cows from their barn. Horses’ manes were found braided. Laundry, rugs, and eating utensils were stolen, some later found buried, others discovered in the tops of trees. A mysterious hand was seen waving out of an upper story window when no one was home. A strange blue glow emanated from the ground and barn. But it was a series of unexplained fires starting in 1922 that truly grasped the public’s attention. Seeming to sprout from no cause whatsoever, fires engulfed numerous items in the house. Walls, ceilings, and furniture erupted into flames when no one was nearby. The house had no electricity, so bad wiring could not be the root of the problem. Sometimes wads of cotton were found wedged into crevices and boxes, and these caught on fire. For many days, the family fought these mysterious fires around the clock, forced to throw blazing furniture out into the snow and extinguish burning wallpaper, pillowcases, and sheets. Living in an area rich in folklore, locals blamed mischievous ghosts. Some thought Mary Ellen might be possessed, setting fires while under the influence of an evil spirit. Others thought methane gas or phosphorous might be the cause. The house stood between two powerful radio stations in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, and a Boston scientist claimed that radio waves sweeping over the farm were causing spontaneous fires to ignite. With the family having to constantly slap out fires, their lives were disrupted. On one particular night, the family and neighbors were forced to extinguish thirty-eight fires. Exhausted by these events, and worried they might die in the flames, the family eventually left, moving to a neighboring farm. To root out the cause of this mystery, Halifax Herald publisher William Dennis reached out to experts, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who despite his interest in the case, declined to visit the farmhouse. Instead, detective Peter Owen Carroll agreed to come out and investigate. Joined by reporter Harold Whidden, they interviewed witnesses and ventured out to the farmhouse. Though alone, they heard someone walking on the floor above. Carroll felt someone touch his wrist as he lay down to sleep and Whidden reported being slapped by an unseen hand. Searches of the house turned up no one. The two men concluded that the strange events had not been caused by human hands. “Antigonish,” a poem that had been written years before by William Hughes Mearns about a different haunting in Antigonish, was published again in 1922 amidst the fervor, and the lines caught on: Last night I saw upon the stair A little man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today Oh how I wish he’d go away. With story after story about the Antigonish haunting appearing in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada, the “little man who wasn’t there,” seeped into the mainstream, eventually infiltrating popular culture in the form of songs. Glenn Miller’s “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There” was a smash hit in 1939, and the “little man” is also referenced in the hilariously wonderful and strange song “Who’s Yahoodi,” recorded in 1940 by both Kay Kyser and Cab Calloway. In early 1922, Dr. Walter Prince of the American Society for Psychical Research read Whidden’s articles and was intrigued. Farm owner Alexander MacDonald offered to join him, and teenager Mary Ellen came along at Prince’s insistence. During their time at the house, Whidden experienced episodes of automatic writing, scribbling on sheets of paper that spirits had caused all of the mysterious events. While Prince believed that what happened to Whidden and Carroll were truly paranormal, he blamed the fires on the teenager Mary Ellen, concluding that she might be possessed. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had kept up with the case, concurred. “I have no doubt at all that the spiritualist explanation of the Antigonish mystery was correct,” he said. “Mary Ellen, the medium, threw out some power which was used by something malevolent outside herself.” Sadly, after another fire, she was committed to the Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane, where she remained for several years before being released and moving on with her life. Eventually the details of the Antigonish haunting faded. Gone are the days when mainstream headlines focused on ghostly tales. These days one must consult more fringe publications such as Fate Magazine and Fortean Times to delve into spectral stories. But the “little man who wasn’t there” continues to haunt our culture to this day. Crime drama fans have seen it referenced in contemporary music and TV shows such as Father Brown, Midsomer Murders, Death in Paradise, and more. The “little man” may not be there, but the legacy of the haunting of the farmhouse in Antigonish very much remains. *** View the full article

To catch a serial killer often requires a highly skilled collection of professional teams across multiple agencies. Their expertise often ranges in areas of forensics, behavioral analysis, profiling, violent crimes, to even technical skills related to the location where the crime was committed. People are murdered by other people and so we can surmise the killers are operating within a certain framework of physical rules. For example, someone who murdered another person would be expected to have physically left that crime scene by certain means of transportation or on foot. A killer, while they can get creative with tools and techniques, can be expected to have murdered their victim with a tool that can likely be either identified or generalized during an autopsy. There are also biological rules in play with the expectations that a suspected killer can only live a certain number of years, and so there is a ticking time clock in which authorities have to capture them. Yet, what if a serial killer is operating by rules that violate the spectrum of our scientific knowledge? How can someone, or something, be stopped by authorities if their existence breaks the laws of physics? Below are 5 novels that explore supernatural serial killers. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes Harper Curtis is a time traveling serial killer whose mission it is to end the life of the last shining girl. Chicago Sun-Times research assistant Kirby Mazrachi, is a shining girl, a woman who burns so bright with potential that only Curtis can detect. Beukes’ novel, which has been adapted for the screen, is an innovative approach set in a somewhat modern-day Chicago with scenes taking place in the Depression-era. Kirby survives a near fatal attack by an unknown assailant who is never caught. The novel follows Kirby’s research trying to find a pattern on the unsolved murders of a number of murdered women. We then follow Harper, the curiosities around his house, which is a shrine to murdered women, and his goal – to kill Mazrachi. There are chapters back and forth in time highlighting Harper’s other murders of shining girls. How can someone stop a killer that slips through reality only to return again and again? The novel is chaotic in the best way, mesmerizing, and emotional considering the underlying themes of trauma and its effects. The Angelmaker by Alex North Katie Shaw grew up in a wonderful home with a loving family. One day that all changed when her brother Chris was attacked by a stranger. As a result, Chris developed a number of issues and eventually separated from his family. Nearly two decades later, Katie now has a family of her own, but the traumatic events of her childhood linger. Then one day, Chris goes missing. Simultaneously, Detectives Laurence Page and Detective Caroline Pettifer are investigating the murder of a professor and during their search, Chris becomes connected to the case. The serial killer here is Jack Lock, who claims he can see into the future. This is a genre blending, multi-layered novel with breadth and depth. A number of issues are explored including religious fanaticism and philosophy. So how easy is it to stop a serial killer who claims to know events to come? Read The Angelmaker to find out. Daphne by Josh Malerman Josh Malerman provides us with a supernatural slasher meets coming-of-age story. Kit Lamb is enjoying the last summer with her high school basketball friends before they all move on with their new lives when a story is told that can’t be untold. Kit’s friend tells her the story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school and was killed. Some say she was murdered. Others say she took her own life. No one really knows. What they do know is that if you think about Daphne she will appear, and whatever you do, don’t think about Daphne or she’ll kill you. Kit has anxiety, and being told not to think about something when you have anxiety can sometimes generate more anxiety. Daphne soon appears and Kit’s friends start to die, one by one. This is also a great meditation on anxiety, our thoughts, and how powerful they can be. The Outsider by Stephen King Stephen King’s The Outsider is a supernatural thriller that incorporates devices of police procedural, crime noir and horror. Detective Ralph Anderson is called to the scene of a brutally murdered young boy in a park. Even with all of Anderson’s experience, the crime is so shocking it even stuns him. Evidence points to local English teacher, Terri Maitland, but he has a firm alibi. As the investigation unfolds, with witness testimony, we’re eventually given a spotlight into who the killer is, and it’s not human, and it certainly has murdered before and has intentions on killing again and again. King weaves in the realistic expectations of a procedural with the elements of the supernatural. The Nightmare Man by J.H. Market Best-selling horror author Ben Bookman grew up on a dark and eerie estate known as Blackwood. He returns home to finish his latest novel, The Scarecrow. The events of that stay are mysterious, and Ben can’t really explain them, but the novel was completed. Before the novel is released, tragic events similar to those he wrote seem to be slipping off the page and taking place in real life. Detective Mills and Detective Blue begin investigating a series of murders known as the Scarecrow Crimes, and Ben becomes the primary target. This novel blends crime investigation and the supernatural to produce a fantastic horror experience that makes you wonder who, or what, is the killer. *** View the full article

The novelist and screenwriter Michael McDowell (1950-1999) published his debut novel The Amulet, a horror novel set in his native Alabama, in 1978. He wrote 32 more books, and Stephen King once called McDowell “the finest writer of paperback originals in America today.” Today, he remains best known as a collaborator of the film director Tim Burton, for whom McDowell wrote the screenplays for Beetlejuice and A Nightmare Before Christmas. While Beetlejuice remains iconic – and the sequel released last year a global blockbuster – it may be Blackwater, a six-volume horror series McDowell published in 1983, that proves to be his legacy. But the recent resurgence of the Blackwater novels–set in Perdido, Alabama in the early 20th century– has begun in Europe, rather than the United States. The book only remains in print in the US thanks to Valancourt Books, which republished it as a single volume in 2017, and that edition has sold around 3000 copies, according to Bookscan. In Europe, by contrast, the series has become a bestselling juggernaut. El Pais reported that in France alone, Blackwater has sold over 1,150,000 copies, and over 300,000 in Italy. In Spain, it was the bestselling book of the year, selling over 700,000 copies. The European edition of Blackwater is stunning, with glinting spines and gilding that makes them look like jewels, and the publishers are making a massive promotional effort for the books, while acquiring the rights to McDowell’s backlist for future publication. “Michael would be gratified by this turn of events,” Laurence Senelick, McDowell’s partner of over twenty years, wrote over email. “Although in interviews he insisted that he was a commercial author, he was grieved that his books could not be easily found in airport bookstalls and failed to get the press attention other authors received.” Blackwater follows the Caskey family over fifty years, beginning in 1919 Perdido, Alabama in the wake of a devastating flood. The tale commences when Oscar Caskey, eldest son of the wealthiest family in town, rescues a young woman, Elinor Dammert, from the flood wreckage. With charm, intelligence, and hair as red as Perdido mud, Elinor quickly ingratiates herself with the Caskey family, while harboring a secret: she is not a woman—but a river monster. Senelick added, “[Blackwater] is an outstanding work of imaginative fiction which failed to receive the attention it deserved during Michael’s lifetime. The fact that it appeals in other languages to other cultures indicates the enduring qualities in the work.” In Blackwater, the initial power struggles primarily take place between Elinor and Oscar’s mother, Mary Love Caskey. In true Southern fashion, the women engage in a quasi-cold war, each deftly injuring the other with quiet gestures. The result is a tense, decades-long battle between the two, that McDowell fleshes out with captivating prose. Of course, amid the family drama, horror “strikes like lightning,” said Nathan Ballingrud, the acclaimed horror writer who wrote the introduction for the Valancourt edition. “McDowell very successfully used [horror] as a seasoning,” he explained. “I think what appeals to me about it, and what I’m guessing appeals to other people, is that it is so much about what we all experience, even if it’s in this exaggerated, Southern Gothic, generational family framework.” In his introduction to Blackwater, Ballingrud also described the work as “subversively progressive.” For one, Caskey women are the powerhouses of the home and the family mining business. Then, there’s McDowell’s treatment of are characters who, while not outrightly labeled, are unmistakably queer. The most prominent is James Caskey, “marked by the stamp of femininity,” who is lovingly described throughout the book. Later in the series, one of the Caskey daughters has “special” female friends and eventually starts a family with a woman. McDowell’s open-mindedness, reflective of his own identity, is perhaps another reason his books continue to resonate with readers today. The one blind spot McDowell had, however, was regarding race, and Ballingrud pointed this out in his introduction too. The Black characters, firstly the Sapp sisters and Bray Sugarwhite, all work for the Caskey’s throughout the series. They have relationships and children alongside the White family but are not allotted anywhere near the same amount of depth and development. Instead, they are in the background, reacting to the Caskey’s actions and while remaining faithful employees, never questioning Elinor’s (or any of the other family members’) suspicious activity. McDowell did make mention of the civil rights movement once the storyline reached the 1960s, but did not make much of it, and the Sapp family’s destiny is interlinked yet entirely subsidiary to that of the Caskey’s. So, why is Blackwater being ravished by European horror fans? French publisher Dominique Bordes, of the publishing house Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, is credited with bringing Blackwater to Europe. He first read about Blackwater in Stephen King’s introduction to The Green Mile, where he cited it as an example of a successful serial publication. Since then, Blackwater stayed in the back of Bordes’ mind. In 2022 he decided to bring it to a French audience, publishing it in the serial model. “[Blackwater] is a single unit, but conceived as six units, each with its own subject, dynamic, emotion, and twists,” Bordes said. “This gives the readers the impression that they are not really reading a 1000-page book. And it’s brilliant—when I understood this, I immediately knew that it was essential not to make a big book, but to return to the original form of Michael McDowell’s writing.” Bordes added that McDowell “also has a very cinematic way of telling events. In Blackwater, for example, there are three levels, three speeds: a broad level where we see a small town in a state in a country evolving with the rhythm of history; a closer level of a family we follow year after year; and an even closer level of actions shown in great detail that are crucial and impact the overall scheme.” By traversing these levels, the reader is plunged deep into the story, forced to examine the subjects up-close. In this way, McDowell evades the one-dimensional stereotypes that often plague the American south. McDowell was born in Alabama, and Senelick wrote that “Blackwater grew out of [McDowell’s] family background, his knowledge of the South and his personal fears, so it was very close to his heart.” Perdido is a real town in Alabama, with a river running through it and a population that creeps just over 620 people. But McDowell reinvented the place for his story, the river so central that it’s a character of its own. Bordes believes that Perdido, as an imaginary territory, is part of what makes Blackwater so special. He compared it to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, writing, “This town, even though it is realistic, follows its own particular rules. This creates a strange feeling for the reader, who, as soon as they start a volume of Blackwater, immediately knows where they are. They are in Perdido.” Will Blackwater get its due in English? Last September, Transworld, an imprint of Penguin in the UK, began releasing the books with the European covers, each of the six books released two weeks apart, with the final volume published in November of 2024. Kirsty Dunseath, publisher at Transworld, said she heard about Blackwater via a Spanish editor who had seen the book was taking off in France. After seeing no one else was publishing it in the UK, Transworld bought the UK rights and then liaised with Monsieur Toussaint Louverture for the cover art. “It has been fantastic to see the response here – and it’s still early days!” Dunseath said. “In terms of new readers, we are hearing so much love, but it’s also exciting also to see how many existing fans of the author are delighted to see the books being re-released.” The serial publication also helps drum up a sensation. “It builds that sense of anticipation, and that collector mentality of wanting to get the full set,” Dunseath said. “This staggered publication was working in Italy and Spain, and we felt it could work well in the UK too, as our markets are quite similar and the viral aspect of the marketing was also part of our campaign.” While it remains to be seen whether Blackwater will achieve the same level of success in English markets as it has in Europe, it is clear that as the series gains new audiences around the world, the rich blend of family drama, horror, and Southern atmosphere remains at the heart of its appeal. Just as Perdido’s waters carve out their place in the town’s landscape, so too does Blackwater continue to carve out its place in the hearts of readers worldwide, transcending borders and time to become a classic of horror literature. View the full article

The Act of Story Statement – As in the Days of Noah A woman and her family must defy and survive a menacing alien race until escape to a hidden place is possible for the last of humanity. Antagonists of As in the Days of Noah The Liberator Aliens – False Gods, True Tyrants The Liberators emerged from hiding, claiming to be humanity’s creators. They offered technology, healing, and a DNA upgrade—but it came at a cost. The nanites rewrote human DNA, enslaving those who accepted. Those who refused are hunted. The Liberators never came to help—they came to own. CURE – The Enforcers of Submission CURE (Center for Unification of Races on Earth) is the global regime enforcing alien rule. A collaboration between human leaders and the Liberators, it controls economies, law enforcement, and military forces. Their mission: eliminate the Unaltereds. Resistance means starvation, exile, or death. Their rule is absolute—unless someone dares to fight back. Mike Danforth – The Enforcer with Cracks in His Armor (Temporary Antagonist) Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, Mike Danforth, is a ruthless enforcer of CURE’s rule. He’s spent years hunting Unaltereds, but doubts are creeping in. Sophie Thompson’s defiance forces him to question everything. He is an enemy—for now. The only question is whether he’ll betray the regime or be consumed by it. The Unidentified Antichrist – The True Mastermind in the Shadows (Future Antagonist) The Liberators rule, but a greater force waits in the shadows. A human leader—charismatic, brilliant, ruthless—will soon rise, not just enforcing alien rule but commanding it. Unlike CURE, he won’t demand submission—he will make the world want to follow him. By the time humanity realizes the truth, it will be too late. Conjuring Your Breakout Title As in the Days of Noah The Unaltereds The Wrong Apocalypse Deciding Your Genre and Approaching Comparables Genre: Apocalypse Romance Stranded by A.K. Duboff – This series explores an alien planet after a crash landing. The characters must navigate a strange world and alien technology. There is also a love story between the main characters. Falling Skies (Television Series) – Follows a small group of humans battling against aliens who have taken over Earth. This series has a similar tone to my manuscript. Left Behind (Series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins) – This series follows the book of Revelation literally through traditional human teachings. My story, however, questions if those interpretations are correct. What if there is no rapture? What if the one-world government is actually an alien invasion? What if the “mark of the beast” is a DNA upgrade serum? Core Wound and The Primary Conflict When Revelation’s prophecy unfolds differently than expected, a mother joins the resistance to escape an alien-controlled Earth, where DNA upgrades steal free will. But for Sophie, survival means more than fighting. She must overcome past betrayals and decide if trusting others is worth the risk to save her family. Primary Conflict The one-world government is controlled by an alien race that arrived on Earth claiming to be humanity’s true creators. They came with promises—peace, progress, and a DNA upgrade that would supposedly perfect the human race. But it didn’t take long for the truth to come out. The upgrade wasn’t just about health or strength—it rewrote human DNA, stripping away free will and turning people into something other than human. Those who refused were cut off completely. No food, no work, no way to survive. The world fell under their rule, and resistance became nearly impossible. Nearly. The Freedom Institute is a pebble in the shoe of the “Liberator” aliens as they seek 100% control over all humanity. Guided by strange dreams and armed with advanced science, the protagonist and the resistance start piecing together a way forward. Little by little, they realize there might actually be hope for something more. A way to fight back. A way to escape. Somewhere out there, beyond the reach of the aliens, lies the Hidden Country—a place no one can track, no one can invade. It’s real. It’s waiting. And it was prepared for those who refused to surrender their humanity—the Unaltereds. Secondary Conflicts A short love triangle, followed by the protagonist struggling to trust her feelings for her final love interest. A mother’s heartbreak over her son taking the alien upgrade, making him ineligible for the resistance’s escape plan. She is desperate to find him but is kept in the dark again and again. A love/hate relationship with Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner, Mike Danforth, a man she has known for years. Protagonist’s Inner Conflict Trust doesn’t come easy anymore. After everything she’s been through, after all the betrayals, it’s easier to rely on herself. Every new situation forces a choice—take the risk and trust, or shut people out and survive alone. She wants to believe there are still people worth trusting, but experience has taught her otherwise. With each decision, she walks the line between survival and isolation. The Incredible Importance of Setting Earth Under Alien Rule No one lives outside the cities. The Liberators forced all rural populations into urban centers—those who resisted were bombed. The cities remain, but life is controlled and restricted. Movement outside city limits is prohibited, and no one can buy or sell without the DNA upgrade. Media is controlled. There is only state TV provided by the aliens. No communication. No one knows what’s happening around the world. The internet is gone. Information is completely controlled. Key Locations The Freedom Institute – A high-tech, sterile underground base, hidden 10 stories below an abandoned hotel. Protected by palladium and glass, equipped with advanced technology. Cafeteria resembles a school cafeteria. Philadelphia Street – Where Sophie trades herself for her children. Philadelphia Police Station – Where Danforth’s loyalty starts to waver. Cabin in the country – A hidden torture chamber, where Sophie’s grit is tested and her scientific resources surprise her captors. Freedom Institute Safe House – A suburban home with a hidden basement, used to keep Sophie’s children safe from CURE’s watchful eyes. Underground Hybrid Farm – A repurposed Naval Academy, now a breeding and training ground for alien-human hybrid soldiers. Here, Sophie pushes her bodysuit to its limits, using every gadget at her disposal to gather intel. The hybrids are massive, intimidating, but flawed—dangerous, yet not the brightest. RV Trip to Pittsburgh – A tense, close-quarters setting where the romance finally solidifies. Bombed-Out Pittsburgh – A ghost city, destroyed by the invasion. Green Tortoise Building in Pittsburgh (Lobby/Basement) – The place where Sophie’s dreams finally make sense and she discovers the key to the resistance’s survival.

THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT: Do whatever it takes to save Tenora and Earth from climate extinction. THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT Hexley, a scientific genius, was never granted the opportunity by his home planet, Tenora, to become the breakout star he has always believed he is. Realizing that Tenora would never allow him to lead the governing Council, even after bioengineering the first Water Carrier to transport Earth’s water to his drought- and disease-ravaged planet, he chose exile to Earth rather than endure ongoing humiliation and rejection. In his thirty-five years on Earth, he has amassed a trillion-dollar fortune by controlling the planet’s water purification and distribution systems; yet, he has never relinquished his obsession with avenging his exile. Now, he has developed the means to end Tenora’s water missions to Earth and will hold Earth’s water hostage until Tenora’s Council begs him to return as their true leader. Only then will he allow Tenora’s planet-saving water missions to resume. Only Hexley’s beloved adult daughter Geri, born on Earth without knowledge of Tenora, can temper his hunger for revenge. Soon, he’ll tell Geri that she’s Tenoran, even though his wife forbids it, and Geri will return to Tenora with him, understanding and supporting all he has achieved and overcome in his life. However, Geri’s need for independence and her commitment to saving climate-challenged Earth thwarts Hexley’s idealistic and unattainable dreams for their relationship, leading him to disinherit her. Geri’s estrangement emotionally complicates and exasperates Hexley’s megalomaniacal obsession with revenge. With mounting grief and despair over losing his daughter fueling his world-ending destructive powers, he will destroy Earth and Tenora if he is not stopped. THE BREAKOUT TITLE THE WATER CARRIERS – The three main characters, in addition to the bio-engineered Water Carriers, can be interpreted as water carriers. HERE, NOT HERE – The origin of Ari’s wisdom that saves the day. A TOUCH AT THE END OF THE WORLD – The origin of Ari’s transformative powers that saves the day. GENRE AND COMPARABLES Genre: Speculative and Climate Fiction, Literary Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven’s genre-bending literary science fiction meets Sequoia Nagamatsu‘s How High We Go In The Dark’s, multiple viewpoints, futuristic technology, multi-generational grief and grievance, love, and hope for the future. CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT When a precocious nineteen-year-old female scientist—raised on Earth but from climate-ravaged Tenora—survives the invasion of her family’s compound in Africa’s Nubian Desert, she is forced to return to Tenora, and in a race against time and climate change must gain the scientific acumen and prescience to stop the destruction of her planet and Earth by the richest man who’s ever lived. OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT PRIMARY: Ari must choose what is good for the many and prioritize the survival of Earth and Tenora over her own desires. At the outset, her mother tasks her with successfully pixilating into deep space from Earth to prepare for a return to Tenora, her planet of origin. Moments before this latest deep space attempt, her mother warns her that if she fails again, she and her parents will soon die on Earth. Ari’s primary ambition has been to remain on Earth and help save it by studying fusion at one of the world’s best schools. She also wants to learn how to be one of many experiencing the world, but her mother’s words force her to confront a greater responsibility. Ongoing challenges to choose the greater good over her personal needs are the rungs of the ladder Ari must continue to climb, as the stakes for the survival of both worlds keep rising with her. SECONDARY: Midway through the story, Ari faces the dilemma of either remaining committed to her mission of stopping Hexley and the secrecy it entails, or being honest with Rabia, her first love, whom she meets on Tenora. She fears that holding back from Rabia may lead to losing her, and ultimately, she does lose her. Months later, Rabia, who has been hiding her own truths, is murdered, plunging Ari into an even deeper conflict as she grapples with all the signs she likely missed regarding Rabia’s situation while being consumed by her own turmoil—signs that could have potentially saved Rabia. THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING Ari sits on a desert dune, sifting sand and watching an egg-eater snake. The physics of the heat waves rising against the vast desert horizon intrigues her mind and rekindles her yearning for a life with peers, tackling scientific problems not of her own making, experiencing snow, winter sports, new foods, and a vibrant life away from her family’s desert compound. Later, in her workshop in the industrial research hangar, Ari works on her pixilation suit: millions of micro-organisms acting as a refraction layer against the radiation from space. Monitors, servers, spectroscopes, chests of parts, and plasma chambers represent some of the environments she thrives in and uses to operate the water and solar energy generation systems for the family’s drought-resistant seed farm. A flashing light signifying a system failure drives Ari to the massive water and solar energy fields. Ari spots her mother walking in the distance, her flowing white linens in the foreground, their home carved into ancient stone in the background. Ari thinks the scene could be from a science-fiction movie, except she and her family really are aliens. Later, at dinner and in her bedroom, Ari learns and worries about her pixilation now scheduled for tomorrow. With her parents standing by, Ari departs from the pixilation desert plateau, undergoing mind-blowing sensations of tearing apart, color, energy, motion, sound, absolute silence, and millions of atomic replicas of herself moving near the speed of light, climaxing with her mother’s voice calling her name in the star-filled rapture of space. Geri Hexley gazes out the window of her family’s luxuriously appointed jet, featuring an Albers painting embedded in an ebony and glass cabin divider. As she travels through a sea of white storm clouds, she contemplates the storm that her news that she won’t be joining Hexley Enterprises will unleash in the Manor House below. Beneath the clouds, she sees the ten-thousand-acre estate, and suddenly, her father’s new city, Hexley City, appears as if from nowhere. Observing it from five thousand feet, she learns from the family pilot that it is home to HexLink and other mysterious enterprises, possibly related to space travel. In a silent, driverless air car gliding along the Shenandoah foothills, Geri finally reaches the guard gatehouse. She then follows the mile-long approach to the house, passing horses grazing in pastures and dense forests beyond. Ultimately, she arrives at the motor court, where a towering water-woman sculpture stands at the center. With head uplifted to the sky, her wide-spread arms drip water into the basin below. Inside the home’s pristine, shiny marble interior, Geri averts her gaze from famous art pieces that adorn the museum-like walls and atriums. In her suite of rooms, she notices a new black material has replaced her desktop, and later at the formally dressed dining table with her family, she sees the same dark material above the table, hovering like a horizontally suspended monolith. Hexley swims in his enclosed Olympic pool struggling to find a rhythm to his stroke. Thwarted by thoughts of his daughter’s arrival and the portentous announcement she will be making, he swallows water, hoists himself from the pool, and naked retreats to the sauna and shower rooms. In his steaming hot shower, he imagines his life on Tenora as a boy in that dark apartment with his father’s large presence filling the small space and the dirty pan of water in the corner for washing, used by all his family, always his turn coming last. He imagines his father standing in front of him in the shower, and he is choking him, but this time the man won’t die. These settings are all within the first thirty pages of the novel. Ari’s additional locations include Tenora’s completely enclosed capital city, Trosi, along with its several beige, sandstone dominant plazas, water and climbing simulations, a minimalist flat each room with its air cleaning arboretum built into the walls, the last aquifer, a hospital room, and a Scout training and research center. Then there’s Patagonia, featuring its mountains, forests, a small village’s dirt street, and a single, dangling-from-the-ceiling light bulb hotel room. Finally, there are various interiors of New York City, plus the Statue of Liberty, and the Oculus. Geri’s additional locations encompass her townhome and Ana’s brownstone in Cambridge, MA, as well as the post-Civil War streets of Khartoum, Khartoum’s Corinthia Hotel, the war-ravaged park along the Nile, the interior and exterior of Al-Nilin Mosque, Omdurman market, the refinery site in Northern Khartoum, Geri’s spartan living quarters there, and the interiors of her advanced technology production site. Lastly, when Geri travels to New York, she will visit a Long Island nouveau-riche south shore home and various interior and exterior sites in NYC. Hexley’s locations include his oversized bedroom and his study, which features floor-to-vaulted-ceiling bookcases filled with first editions; the corridors, suspended glass walkways, pixilation chambers and cages of Hexley’s underground research center, the Dandelion; the forests of Hexley’s estate, which include a new building site in progress with crops, solar power, and cattle, as well as a mid-completion full site enclosure; the interiors of HexLink with the Water Ships; and the immense production and assembly site in Hexley City, as viewed from Hexley’s private viewing room, The Aerie.

On January 22nd, 2025 journalist/essayist/ screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper died suddenly at the age of 66. He was a friend as well as a fellow Baltimore-dwelling expat who hailed from Harlem. I ran into him often on the street, and we would stop to chat, sometimes for a couple of hours. Neither of us knew how to drive and Barry once joked that our constant strolling through the city was the reason we kept running into one another. “We’re New Yorkers, we’re used to walking,” he said. As a fan of Barry’s work in the 1980s, his streetwise record reviews and essays published in The Village Voice and Spin were my introduction to his writing. He was one of the first “hip-hop scribes,” slaying with textual style that swaggered like a B-boy in prep school and was as inspired by the broken glass everywhere sidewalks as by the non-fiction prose of Joan Didion, Jimmy Breslin and Truman Capote, especially In Cold Blood. Barry described the latter writer as, “My hero.” Those stories, especially his longread classics on the early years of crack in Harlem, wild drug cowboy Larry Davis, and christening producer Teddy Riley’s New Jack Swing musical era, served as inspiration for the next generation of post-New Journalism writers that included Da Ghetto Communicator, Karen Good, Sacha Jenkins and myself. However, beginning in 1990, it was Barry’s scripts for the hood classics New Jack City (1991), Above the Rim and Sugar Hill (both released in 1994) that people watched repeatedly and quoted flawlessly. We can see the inspiration of New Jack City in the personas (and hear it in the music) of Puffy, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, all dudes who went from the streets to suites with the swiftness of the film’s celebrated crack kingpin Nino Brown. Fellow writer Nelson George, who Cooper helped years ago to get in at the Village Voice, first put me in contact with Barry in 1998 when I was helping the Larry Flynt-owned Black style magazine Code to scout for soulful contributors. When Barry told me he lived in Baltimore, the same city where my mom relocated in 1978, I knew it was time to visit. Thirteen years after his last produced feature, I conducted an interview with Barry for the hip-hop issue of Stop Smiling magazine. Barry shared many stories over coffee at Xanzo Café on Charles Street. The tales ranged from schooling himself at the Schomburg Library, where he read Richard Wright and Countee Cullen, to smoking dust with his crew after watching a basketball game at the Rucker to meeting with homeboys outside Esplanade Gardens, the co-op building where he grew up from the age of 10, to discuss the latest films they’d seen. “We met at the base of the Martin Luther King statue and that would be like our Algonquin Round table where we talked,” he recalled. “We would sit on the bench at 13, 14, 15 years old and be critically breaking down movies like Roger Ebert. The hustlers, the dope kids, the scramblers and the nerds all went there to discuss movies. Even the dope dealers were intellectuals.” Located on 147th Street and 8th Avenue, Esplanade was two blocks away from the Roosevelt Theater. Once a jewel of the community, by the late 1960s it had become a grindhouse best known for showing horror, Blaxploitation and kung-fu flicks. According to Barry, that massive movie house also had a reputation for rodents. “We called it the Rat Palace,” he laughed. It was at the Roosevelt where he saw Shaft, Superfly (“I went to see that six times”) and Across 110th Street, which opened on December 19th, 1972. Fifty-three years later I could imagine Barry sitting in the center of the theater, leaning forward slightly and lost in the graphically vicious drama projected on screen. The film was adapted from the 1970 novel Across 110th (Street was added to the movie title), by Wally Ferris, which was written as a fluke by a career camera man whose main gig was working for a local news channel. In the counterculture newspaper The Staff, sometimes crime writer Harlan Ellison praised the book. “I read Wally Ferris’s novel, Across 110th,” he wrote. “It was a tough and uncompromising naturalistic novel of underworld life in Harlem, not as good as Chester Himes’s Coffin Ed Johnson-Grave Digger Jones books, but a direct lineal descendant of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson in terms of honesty and dealing with the pragmatic realities of omnipresent violence. It was an upfront piece of street fiction, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.” Decades later, writer/editor Andrew Nette gave the book and author a much-needed spotlight in Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980 (2019). “The fact that Across 110th is such an interesting book and a vivid depiction of New York at the time it was written is in no small part due to its author, Wally Ferris,” Nette wrote in his excellent essay “City on the Brink: Wally Ferris’s Across 110th.” “Ferris was a union cameraman and stage manager for WNEW-TV in New York for almost forty years. He worked on the 10 o’clock News and most of their other regular programming. He was also a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn by parents descended from immigrants who had left Ireland during the Great Famine. He grew up during the Depression, brought up by his mother after his father, a policeman, had died at an early age.” While today I too am a fan of Ferris’s brutal book, it was the film that I was aware of first, having seen it opening weekend at the Loew’s Victoria on 125th Street. The day before its release there was a gala premiere at the theater that included stars Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto. Outside the theater they were greeted by a cheering crowd of more than 200 surprised to see that type of event in Harlem. Preparing the audience of more than 2,000 for the mucho spilled blood they were about to see on screen, Quinn, according to the New York Times, explained, “The excessive violence of the film is intentional, because desperation creates violence, and until we end desperation of my people and your people, we can’t end violence.” Quinn’s crazed character Captain Mattelli (Sullivan in the book) brings a lot of violence and anger to every scene’s he’s in; a dirty cop who has no problem smashing Black suspects in the face while calling them the N word, Mattelli was a cop driven crazy by the streets he was supposed to be protecting and Quinn played dude with intensity. The year before I’d seen The French Connection at the same theater and Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), was Officer Friendly compared to Mattelli. Of course, it didn’t help his disposition when he was partnered with big, black Lieutenant William Pope, who towers over him in both height and intellect. Played with equal bravado by Yaphet Kotto, his character was a recent college grad that represented “a new kind of policeman.” But, as Mattelli tried to teach him, the job would soon change him. In one scene he offered Pope a shot of whisky. “I don’t drink,” Pope replied. Mattelli chuckled. “You will.” While Ferris gave the characters more depth than their screen versions, especially Mattelli (who experienced a double whammy tragedy that explained his asshole-ness), director Barry Shear and screenwriter Luther Davis were faithful to the novel. Shear was primarily known as a television director, but his bugged-out debut feature Wild in the Streets (1969) is another favorite. Though Across 110th Street has been labeled Blaxploitation, it has also been embraced by the neo-noir crews and the followers of Quentin Tarantino, who snatched the dope Bobby Womack theme song for his third feature Jackie Brown. Across a 110th Street opened with a 1968 black Cadillac cruising up the West Side Highway to the 110th Street exit, where it turned off. The Caddie made its way to 7th Avenue, turned right on 125th Street and kept moving until reaching the destination. The entire time the ride was in motion, the theme song blared loud and proud in true Blaxploitation style. Following the aural blueprint laid down by Shaft the year before, the song was soulfully funky. “Isaac Hayes (Shaft) and Curtis Mayfield (Superfly) had done their things, and I told United Artists they could make me just as big, and they already had a film company too,” Womack told Phonograph Record in 1974. “So they got me the score for this film. Actually (composer/ trombonist) J.J. Johnson was already involved, but it was a chance at least to write some songs even if I wasn’t running the show.” Womack told Steven Rosen of Music World in 1973, “I went back to LA and watched the picture and met the cast, got with J.J. (Johnson co-wrote the theme and scored the instrumental tracks) who gave me a lot of pointers on timing and there it was.” Two weeks later the music was turned in. Womack’s only criticism, however, was about the way in which the film coordinators handled the music after it was completed. “Like they had a guy’s head being put under the (iron) presses and they were playing something like ‘I Don’t Care How You Do It.’ I wouldn’t have no funky music like that when they were killing a guy.” When the men got out of the ride in front of a shabby tenement, the audience recognized them as pale faced interlopers on a mission. They were Italian mob men coming uptown to collect $300,000 from the illegal numbers banks operated by Doc Johnson (Richard Ward). Inside the apartment, the black and white gangsters were doing their money counting and exchange when there was a knock. Looking through the peephole, the door dude saw two black cops, but they were really just disguised as cops with a plan to rip off all the loot. The leader was Jim Harris, played by underrated actor Paul Benjamin. A building superintendent who grew-up hard, Harris had been to prison and was looking to finance his future with other folk’s funds. His partner in crime included fellow heist man Joe Logart (Ed Bernard), who froze when the bullets started flying and bodies began dropping. In the book, Harris and Logart served in Vietnam together, but that connection was never mentioned in the movie. Both men were serious guys, but the same couldn’t be said for goofy getaway driver Henry J. Jackson. Portrayed with flare by Antonio Fargas, whose over-the-top flamboyance served as grim comic relief, he’s the weakest link. In the book Jackson called it “the biggest bang-bang heist that happened around here in twenty years.” Though they made it out alive after Harris fatally machine gunned all the hoods and two cops, the next 24 hours proved to be the longest of their lives. While the marauding trio was splitting the cash, the cops, mafia, and Doc Johnson began searching for them. You or I would’ve been on the first train, plane, or automobile out of the hood, but these guys stayed within the confines of Harlem as though they were bulletproof. They weren’t. It might’ve been cool if Jackson hadn’t decided to dress like a pimp in multicolored threads with a matching hat and take his cold cash (he kept his money in the freezer) to bar/whore house the 7-11 Club. That club reminded me of the spots and after-hours joints I’d heard about from DJ Hollywood, outlaw places where vice was nice and anything could happen. It was at 7-11 where mad Mafia Man (a crazed Anthony Franciosa as Nick D’Salvio) found Jackson sucking on a whore’s toes and smashed a glass in his face. I was so used to viewing Franciosa as the cool reporter Jeff Dillion on television drama The Name of the Game, it was wild seeing him as a bloodthirsty son-in-law of the syndicate Don who relished thinking of new ways to torture and kill. That sadistic scene was one that stayed with me for years. Writer Christopher Chambers, author of the forthcoming Street Whys (Three Room Press), says, “A lot of Blaxploitation films were cartoony even when they had better production values. This one is not. Across 110th Street was about as gritty as you can get in the genre and frankly if Barry Shear had continued to direct features he would have been the Peckinpah of urban crime.” Chambers first saw it at the Carlin Drive-In in Baltimore when he was a kid, but has revisited it several times since. “I think its aged well,” he says. “As you see the cycles of 1970s decay in New York City, anticipate the ferment and gentrification, and indeed the relapses. People are dope fiends, thieves and hoodlums, murderers, gangster molls and femme fatales, johns and tricks, dirty cops, racist cops, uncaring politicians for a reason – those reasons don’t change.” Across a 110th Street opened eight months after Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia masterpiece The Godfather, but showed different kind of made men. “I do love how this was the anti-Godfather,” Chambers added, “wherein Italian criminals aren’t dapper dons and white-collar legit businessman, but rather nasty violent thugs, which was reality.” Certainly, much of D’Salvio’s anger erupted when Black, gravelly voice boss Doc Johnson, who he tried to punk, told him straight, “You ain’t never gonna make it. You know that? What are you, 40, 45 years old? You were a punk errand boy when you married the boss’s daughter and you’re still a punk errand boy.” Out of all the characters Doc Johnson was my favorite. An old-school numbers guy who rose from nothing, he reminded me of a few self-made men I knew (or heard about) back in those days: from business men to barbers, in-the-life pimps to Sonny behind the bar at the Shalimar, most of them cats made something from nothing. Though it’s been said that Doc was based on legendary gangster Bumpy Johnson, who just the year before was played by Moses Gunn in Shaft, actor Richard Ward brought a natural gruffness to the character that was also laced with humor. After the death of Jackson, who was castrated, the cat-and-mouse chase became even more intense and deadly; so much happened that it was hard to believe it was all within a 24-hour period. Not wanting the spoil the ending for those who haven’t seen Across a 110th Street, but the final images of the black mobsters on the rooftop had me questioning the philosophical definition of good guys and bad guys for years. As a champion of underrated writers, as well as authors who only published one novel, I was happy that Nette’s essay introduced me to the writing of Wally Ferris. Though Ferris worked on several books after the success of his debut, no others were published. “My father wrote almost every day and was working on a project up until the last days of his life,” Ferris’ daughter Elisabeth told Nette. “There are a few completed manuscripts.” One completed project was a thriller called The Extradition, which his friend Wallace Stroby, a crime writer from New Jersey, had read. Stroby told Nette: “The Extradition was about a New York prosecutor and a tough cop who go to Brazil to extradite a Bernie Madoff-like character. By its nature it was a little dated. Not sure what the history of it was, but Ferris hadn’t had an agent since the early seventies, so I doubt it got around much. I think for Wally, the book and the movie were a fluke. He had a good-paying union job at WNEW and was raising a family, and I don’t think he wanted to upset all that to chase down some vague literary goal. At least that’s what I’m guessing.” Wally Ferris died in July 2014. Unfortunately, Across 110th has been out-of-print for decades and currently sells for over a hundred dollars online. There is supposed to be a Scottish reprint this year featuring an introduction written by Stuart Cosgrove. As a connoisseur of uptown crime narratives, I can see the influence of Across a 110th Street in Barry Michael Cooper’s cinematic joints, the Fat Jack/Harlem World narrative of “The Hip-Hop Shangri-La,” the Bumpy Johnson series Godfather of Harlem, and my 2023 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine short story “The Life and Times of Big Poppa,” a tribute to the uptown numbers game and, as the protagonist often said, “Back when Harlem was Harlem.” Four days before Barry Michael Cooper died, he and I exchanged emails. I had interviewed him for a CrimeReads piece on NYC gang movies (The Cool World was a favorite), and he was responding. I don’t think we ever had a conversation or correspondence where Harlem wasn’t spoken about or touched on. During our last chat he brought up artist Romare Bearden, but we could’ve easily talked about gangster (and former Apollo owner) Guy Fisher, Daddy Was A Numbers Runner author Louise Merriwether, journalist Les Matthews (Mister 1-2-5), our buddy Nelson George (their daddy’s hung out at the same 7th Avenue bar) Claudine actress Diahann Carroll, rapper Spoonie Gee, or the countless other wonderful people and stories that have emerged from the golden streets of Harlem. For more on the work of Barry Michael Cooper click here and here. View the full article

Do love and danger go together? They sure do in my world! A romantic plot, even a small one, adds depth and layers to any story, and suspense is no exception. In fact I’d argue it gives the reader space to breathe and more to care about when someone the protagonist loves is in danger. Here’s a list of ten of the best romantic thrillers I’ve read in the past year. Mind Games by Nora Roberts The name Nora Roberts says it all. I loved everything about this book from the second chance romance to the unusual profession of the heroine (video game creator) as well as the very unusual suspense with Thea’s connection with the man who killed her parents. A perfect blend of romance and suspense. Fireline by Kate Angelo There’s something about a fireman. . . and especially a smokejumper. The high stakes suspense had me flipping pages and I loved the building romantic tension. Kate Angelo is a newer author for me, and I’ve loved everything by her that I’ve read. In the Barren Ground by Loreth Ann White I’m a sucker for a wilderness setting like this one in the Barrens near the Arctic Circle. I loved Tana’s spunk and determination to do her job even five months pregnant. The building suspense and the budding romance with bad boy Crash, a bush pilot, made for an irresistible read. Edge of Collapse by Kyla Stone Wait, this is an apocalyptic novel so how is it a a thriller with suspense? In all the best ways! It starts off with Hannah at the mercy of a serial killer. She’s been caged and abused by the madman for five years and is pregnant when an EMP attack takes out the grid in Michigan. The cat-and-mouse game she has to play with her abuser and the romance that develops between her and Liam, a reclusive soldier, will take the entire series to play out, but you’ll savor every word. Vanishing Girls by Lisa Regan I love a strong heroine, and detective Josie Quinn’s determination and drive hooked me immediately. The slow burn romance with Luke was the perfect balance as the ticking time bomb of finding a missing girl before it’s too late. The story scrolled out with perfect pacing. All the Little Raindrops by Mia Sheridan I loved this perfect blend of thriller and romance. Its heart-pounding tension and deeply emotional love story blend a delicious concoction swoon-worthy moments and edge-of-your-seat suspense. The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen The Spy Coast is a fresh and thrilling take on the classic spy novel, blending espionage, small-town charm, and pulse-pounding suspense. I, ahem, am of a certain age where I appreciated more mature characters and the romance was a plus. Version 1.0.0 The Garden Girls by Jessica Patch I loved this novel. It is a hold-your-breath-and-pray novel full of suspense and unexpected twists. The remote location (an island in the Outer Banks) added to the tension as Bexley, aided by the last man she would have asked for help, searches for her sister who was taken by a serial killer. The secret baby trope added to the interesting layers for me. Cold Dead Night by Lisa Phillips An unstoppable serial killer who traumatized former FBI agent Kenna is determined to land her in jail for his crimes. The nail-biting tension doesn’t let up, and this is a terrific thriller with a small romantic plot I suspect will be further developed in the next book. I like those kinds of series where there’s an overarching thread of romance that plays out. It keeps the thriller elements high. Beautiful Storm by Barbara Freethy When her father’s plane mysteriously disappeared in the middle of an electrical storm, Alicia Monroe became obsessed with lightning. Obsessed by storms, Alicia covers local stories by day and chases storms at night. One night during a violent thunderstorm she sees what appears to be a murder during a flash of lightning and her investigation puts her in extreme danger. The storm aspect of this novel was particularly compelling to me (my brother died from a lightning strike) and I read it all in one sitting. *** View the full article