Where Is Papa’s Shining Star?


  Wealthy Alan Ashley, blinded in World War I, returns home to face a challenge to his ability to run the family business. As the case goes to court, he is drawn to the cheerful, ever-optimistic Lenore Seldon, his defense attorney’s secretary. When he wins his case, he offers her employment, but she declines and disappears from his life.

   Ten years later, frail and in desperate need of work, Lenore answers his ad for a personal assistant. He hires her with the agreement that she will live in, chaperoned by his housekeeper, so that she can drive for him, and he can teach her to use the Braille writer. She is the perfect employee, but he senses that she is frightened of something—or someone.

   When he finds himself falling in love with her, he must uncover her secrets in order to save their relationship---and to save her from herself.



Finding Papa’s Shining Star


   In the dark days of the Great Depression, when eleven-year-old Bobbie Rycroft became Annie Ashley, cherished daughter of Alan and Lenore, she left behind a life of fear and deprivation. Or so she believed as she grew to womanhood, sheltered in an affluent home with every material possession and opportunity. Graduating from Vassar just as America gears up for war, she enters into a hasty marriage with David Levinson only ten days before he goes overseas. When he returns, they are strangers.

   David loves Annie deeply, but he realizes that she cannot live in the present until she has made peace with her past. When he urges her to find Albert Rycroft’s shining star, she insists that Bobbie is dead. But David knows that Bobbie is very much alive and that his own tangled connection to her past could put Annie in danger of losing her life.



Dancing with Velvet


   In the waning days of the Great Depression, Celeste Riley wonders if life will always be the same: going to work, coming home to keep house for her widowed father, who ignores her. She clings to her married sister and to the recurring dream of a blue velvet curtain and a faceless lover who beckons her beyond it.


    Then a blue velvet dress in the window of a local department store seems to promise the change in her life she so desperately longs for. When she dances in the arms of traveling salesman Kent Goddard at the Roof Garden, she is sure she has found the man of her dreams and is crushed when he disappears from her life.


   Then, soon after Pearl Harbor propels the United States into war, Kent returns in uniform as a student at the new bombardier training school. Their deepening relationship is threatened by a wartime separation, but not as much as when Celeste realizes that what she doesn't know about the man of her dreams maybe become her worst nightmare.



Ruthann’s War


  Ruthann Cooper can barely remember the fiancé whose plane went down in flames over Nazi Germany. He faded as she did her bit for the war effort in the munitions factory. Now, the war over, she meets the faculty on her first day as a schoolteacher. From that moment on it’s impossible to forget the piercing blue eyes and gentle, artistic ways of the superintendent of schools, who welcomes her both to the school and to his life.

   WWI veteran Drew Mallory still battles a debilitating injury from that earlier conflict. With complications of the injury, plus a grown daughter, the widower feels his life is all but over…until he meets the new third grade teacher. His renewed spirit rejoices, yet he must consider the effect he may have on her life.

   Their deepening relationship spawns a series of increasingly vicious attacks on Ruthann, and she finds herself on the brink of another, more personal war simply because of Drew’s interest in her. Should she retreat, as he wants her to for her own safety? Or can she do battle for the man she finds herself loving more than life?



The Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series

 Book One:  The Bogus Biker


Meet Penelope Pembroke: owner of the best (only) B&B in Amaryllis, Arkansas (pop. 5492) who’s flirting with 50, divorced (Travis Pembroke, had a wandering eye'), mother of Amaryllis PD Detective Bradley Pembroke, apple of her father Jake Kelley's eye, best friend of Mary Lynn Hargrove, the mayor's wife, and the only human creature tolerated by Abijah, the 18-pound orange tabby who stalks the family home-turned B&B. Penelope keeps her ear to the ground, her eyes open, and her battered heart in solitary confinement. Then one night, while having a beer and a Reuben at the seedy-though-popular Sit-n-Swill, she meets Tiny aka Sam who is about as much of a biker as she is a belly dancer. She insists on dabbling in danger and disaster despite Sam's best efforts to discourage her. The fireworks begin in Book 1, light up the skies in Books 2,3,4, and 5, and end in one spectacularly explosive display in Book 6. Book 1: The Bogus Biker A police raid on the Sit-n-Swill, a devastating fire at her ex-husband's historic home, and a game of cat-and-mouse with Tiny aka Sam turns Penelope's placid life upside down.



Book Two:  The Stubborn Schoolhouse Spirit


When Penelope agrees to help her best friend Mary Lynn Hargrove, the mayor's wife, renovate the town's first school as a community center, she discovers the old building isn't quite as empty as it appears. Mary Lynn hears voices, and light bulbs and even flashlights go instantly dark at the bottom of the 13 steps leading to the basement. Is the town's founding father Jeremiah Bowden, who built the school, still around? Or his sister, Miss Daisy, the first teacher? Or is it someone—or something—more sinister? Then Sam telephones unexpectedly and tells Penelope to stay away from the place, but he won't tell her why. When she decides not to take his advice, she discovers she's rolled out a blueprint not for remodeling but for disaster.



Book Three:  The Feed Store Floozy


Penelope has known Mayor Harry Hargrove all her life and his wife Mary Lynn since high school. But maybe she doesn't know them as well as she thinks. Why are they so upset when former Amaryllis resident Brice Dolan returns to open an antique store in one of Main Street's many empty buildings, when it can only help the small town's struggling economy? That the building has had many lives—feed store, grocery store, and saloon—isn't unusual. Even what went on upstairs during its saloon days isn't that surprising, so why are Harry and Mary Lynn so on edge? Penelope has to wonder—but she isn't counting on the murder and mayhem Brice brings with him.



Book Four:  The Possum Hollow Hullabaloo


Possum Hollow has existed outside Amaryllis for as long as anyone can remember. It’s a dark place with dark secrets, and outsiders aren’t welcome. The elementary school which has sprung up inside the impenetrable wall separating the people of the Hollow from the town, struggles to show the children there’s a better life outside. Soon after Penelope and Mary Lynn volunteer to fill in for an absent faculty member, one of the students and her little sister accidentally lead police to a fresh grave deep in the woods. And Miss Maude Pendleton, who scared generations of high school seniors into reading Shakespeare and Chaucer, faces the necessity of learning a whole new curriculum if she wants to stay alive. Penelope keeps the B&B slick as a whistle, but now she’s in the middle of a mess she’s not sure anyone can clean up.



Book Five:  The Larcenous Legacy


Young Fr. Kristopher Dombrowski brings a breath of fresh air to the historic parish of St. Hyacinth. Accompanying him are his widowed sister Ivana and her son Will. But another member of the family seems bent on making trouble, and it’s all connected with an ordination gift Fr. Kris received from his grandfather, a post-WW II immigrant to the U.S. from Poland. When the chalice keeps turning up in the museum taking shape in the old school, now a community center, Penelope isn’t sure what’s going on—or who to trust.



Book Six:  Sam’s Last Stand


 Sam has promised Penelope he’ll be back to stay, but when he comes back and gets in the middle of a kidnap investigation, she realizes she doesn’t really know him after all. He blurts out the truth about his tortured past, but he can’t let it go, and Penelope can’t live with it, no matter how much she loves him. Events spiral out of control, and Penelope finds herself face to face with Sam in a moment of decision for them both. Each must take a stand. Can they find common ground? Or, like Custer, will they both go down fighting?




The Dreamland Series


Book One:  Lethal Legacy in Dreamland


   What's the ghost of Al Capone doing in Dreamland, Arkansas?

   Trixie's willing to live and let live, but Al doesn't seem to be so tolerant!

   Trixie Blake barely remembers her small hometown or the grandfather who left her the Quimby Building on the antiquated town square. Newly-widowed and at loose ends, she treks to Dreamland to look for a fresh start. It takes less than twenty-four hours to discover she’s in the path of a shadowy development company’s plans to take over all of Dreamland’s historic downtown. That is, if they can persuade the three hold-outs to sell and move on. When Trixie decides to become hold-out number four, her already precarious situation deteriorates rapidly.


   She finds an odd assortment of allies: the Drummond sisters, two feisty senior citizens who run the Sunshine Style Shoppe on the first floor of Trixie’s building; Rudy James, a former high school classmate (now the proprietor of the Twilight Bar and Grill); Glen Ellard, the long-time mayor who owns the town’s only hardware store; Hetty Green, a retired teacher who keeps her fingers on the pulse of the town; Danny Jefferson, who doesn’t let his Down Syndrome define him; Mitch Langley, whose connection to the development company is too close for comfort; and Candace King, self-appointed head of the Dreamland Historic Association, who knows the town’s dark secrets.


   On top of everything else, Trixie’s great-grandfather’s buddy Al Capone seems to be still in residence on the Quimby Building’s second floor. Does he also get out and about to vandalize Trixie’s hotel room, slash her tires, and make threatening phone calls? And why does Police Chief Doug Everton want Trixie out of town sooner than later?


Has Al met his match in Trixie Blake? Or is he just a bystander in a seedier plot? Scroll up and grab a copy of Lethal Legacy in Dreamland today.



Book Two:  Dangerous Deception in Dreamland


   Trixie doesn’t really mind All Capone’s ghost hanging around her building. It’s what he left behind that threatens her!

   Even if she’s not interested in Al’s legacy, she can’t keep other people from wanting to find it.

   Trixie’s ready to open her tearoom and gift shop on the second floor of the reputedly haunted Quimby Building. She’s established an uneasy truce with Police Chief Doug Everton--after all, they have a mutual secret to guard. Her high school chum Rudy has his life back together. Candace King is determined to make Dreamland appreciate its history. Danny Jefferson has discovered a hidden talent for photography but manages to take all the wrong pictures at the right time. And Trixie’s and Mitch’s budding friendship is at the point of blooming. Unfortunately, they’re all wrong in believing the town’s recent dirty dealings are over and done with.

   Enter a new assortment of unsettling characters: two FBI agents, one of whom may be rogue; Ross Carrow, Rudy’s ex-army buddy, who runs the Moonlight Tattoo Parlor when he’s not out stirring up trouble; and Sean Mercer, a forensic anthropologist whose curiosity may well end up killing more than the proverbial cat. The second floor of the Quimby Building, once the Castle Casino and soon to be Trixie’s Treasures, becomes a volcano of erupting secrets and dangerous doings.


Can Trixie dig in her heels one more time? Does she even want to? Find out in Desperate Deception in Dreamland.



Book Three:  Ghostly Gambit in Dreamland


Scared to death--can it really happen? Trixie may find out, but will she live to tell the tale?

Trixie's not sure she wants to hang around to find out!

    Just when Trixie thinks her rocky start in Dreamland may be smoothing out, her mother announces she’s returning to open a bed and breakfast in the old family home. Maybe Trixie can deal with Lucy, but she’s not even going to try to deal with City Council member Daphne Carter’s toothy son Alan who seems to think he knows better than Trixie what’s good for the historic building bequeathed to her by her grandfather. And she’s not sure her definition of moving on is exactly what Mitch Langley has in mind. They’ve been best friends since she arrived, but is either one of them ready for more


   Between the new police chief, the paranormal team Candace King brings in to hunt for ghosts in Al Capone’s old bootlegging tunnels, Danny Jefferson’s candid photos which are definitely worth more than a thousand words, and forensic anthropologist Sean Mercer’s insatiable curiosity, Trixie can’t catch a break.

   And someone somewhere has a bone to pick with Trixie’s relatives, most of whom are long dead. But Trixie’s still alive, at least for the time being.


   Trixie's beginning to think coming back to Dreamland wasn't such a good idea after all.



The Diamond Springs Series


Book One:  The Legacy of Diamond Springs


   Diamond Springs, once a thriving plantation only twenty-five miles from Vicksburg, Mississippi, becomes a school for boys in order to generate income for the now-impoverished Ainsleigh family. Over the years, the oldest son of each generation takes over as headmaster. Eventually the school evolves into a small prestigious private college. Refusing to take Federal funds for its operation, Ainsleigh College remains segregated until the current president, Barrett Ainsleigh III, takes over from his father Adrian. Endeavoring to expurgate the sins of the fathers, he guides the institution to new heights.

   But he can't change the past or bring back his vanished mother or his murdered wife or the lynching of a young black man, ending his promising future, during the dark days of 1964 and the Civil Rights struggle. Ainsleigh House holds dangerous secrets which threaten to destroy his beloved only daughter Jewel and the woman he has loved since childhood. Racial tensions kept him from marrying Dr. Cordelia Pendleton, but their current relationship is an unspoken secret. She is the only mother Jewel has ever known and the glue that keeps the small family together.

   Despite Barrett's efforts, he knows the college is financially doomed. He has two choices: turn it over to the state for incorporation in their higher education system or sell out to Senator Court Clanton's cohorts who want the house and grounds for a resort. Gordon Ainsleigh, who built the house in 1840, left the property tied up in the terms of his will. Clanton, however, will do anything to get his hands on it.

   Add to the mix investigative reporter Mitch Whitney who has been sent for a story of a legendary blue diamond at Ainsleigh College; Captain Ike Innis of the state police who intends to reopen the case of young Bennie Carpenter who was falsely accused of rape and brutally lynched at the Springs, part of the college campus; and Chief Larry McClure who sees his relatively peaceful town begin to crumble as more bodies turn up at the Springs.

   Five generations of Ainsleighs have paid the price for their various sins, and now the sixth, the young Jewel, is threatened with retribution for sins she never committed. Mitch vacillates between giving up his story and staying as a buffer between Jewel and the past. Neither may survive to see the future.


Book Two: The Flames of Diamond Springs


   Investigative reporter Mitch Whitney is back in Diamond Springs, Mississippi, but not on assignment this time. He hopes the sordid secrets of the Ainsleighs have all seen the light of day, but he’s not really sure there aren’t more lurking around. He is sure, however, that he wants to pursue his budding relationship with Jewel Ainsleigh, perhaps the only untainted member of the entire bunch.


   Now living more or less on her own in the faculty dormitory of Ainsleigh College and teaching part time, he knows she is still in danger of falling back into the old habits of self-doubt and dependency since her father and the woman who raised her and almost protected her to death live too close for comfort and are determined to take her with them when they move on.


   What he intended to be a short visit turns into more when the body of town biographer Dr. Mauldin is found in the ashes of the derelict Pickett home. Jewel, who has been working part-time with her to sort through the historical documents and artifacts hidden away by Eleanor Pickett before her murder-suicide scenario at the Springs the previous summer, is determined to finish the project on her own.


But Mitch knows she’s a target again. Telling his editor at Behind the Story Magazine that another expose is possible, he hangs around to keep an eye on Jewel. When she insists on learning to handle a gun, he takes her to Gil Farrington’s Gun Range where she proves a natural. Despite a torrent of threats and a few amateur bombs strategically placed in her vicinity, she keeps on keeping on—until the night she steals Mitch’s back-up gun and his car keys and heads out to the Springs on her own.


Book Three:  The Dust of Diamond Springs



   After surviving a you can’t make this stuff up set of circumstances in Diamond Springs, Jewel determines to shake the dust of Diamond Springs from her feet forever. Driving past the city limits sign, Mitch cautions, “Never say never,” but she isn’t buying it.


   She starts a new job at the state archives in Jackson and receives a grant to pursue a master’s degree in archival studies. Meanwhile, Mitch’s editor has suggested he move to Jackson to chase down more antebellum stories which are selling well for Behind the Story Magazine. He jumps at the chance to leave New York and be nearer Jewel and also his mother in Wisconsin.


   Unfortunately, an assignment to uncover the secrets of Walnut Rise near Natchez turns nasty when Jewel’s uncle and only surviving relative on her mother’s side, Dr. Palmer Collins, seems to have knowledge of the three sisters who died mysteriously in the old house, and he’s not interested in sharing what he knows, especially with the police. When Jewel learns about the link, she turns her back on Mitch.


   Feeling that he’s been lied to and used as a private investigator rather than an investigative journalist, Mitch quits his job and moves back to his hometown in Wisconsin. There he goes to work for the newspaper his father, who died when Mitch was nine, founded and nurtured into a solid small town fixture. With the promise of assuming the position of editor down the line, Mitch begins to research and write features which boost circulation.


   He tries not to focus on what he’s lost—Jewel, the woman he didn’t mean to fall in love with but ended up head over heels—until her life is threatened yet again. She’s the last of the Ainsleighs, and someone wants to be sure the line dies out forever. Pulled into the hunt for her deadly nemesis Mitch finds himself in personal danger one more time.


Homicide Hotel


   What Dr. Guy Gresham has spent a quarter of a century trying to convince himself he didn’t really see what he saw on the fourth floor of the derelict Jordan Hotel. Now, back in Grape Springs, Texas, to bury his only family, the grandmother who raised him, he isn’t quite as convinced as before.


   Add to his confusion the old green vase his grandmother instructed him to give to her best friend Delia Shawcross should Delia outlive her. For as long as he could remember, the ugly glass piece had lived on top of the bookcase in Melanie Gresham’s living room. Now it seems to have moved quarters to the buffet in the dining room, and Guy has no clue who—or what—is responsible for the vase’s refusal to stay put.


   Enter his high school classmate Veronica Taylor who has taken refuge in her hometown after a bitter divorce and tells him plainly that she isn’t looking for a repeat of her disastrous marriage. Guy isn’t looking either, having contented himself with the bachelor lifestyle while working for and learning from Dr. Noah Lorne, the acknowledged top forensic medical examiner in the state.


   The Jordan Hotel still stands on the town square, its darkened windows like empty eye sockets in a skull. Now Guy has to know if what he saw is still there on the fourth floor. He never expects to find himself trapped in the middle of a homicide investigation which threatens to uncover his grandmother’s long-hidden secrets—and his own identity.



What Are the Prickly Pear Hiding?


   Growing up in Calico Creek, New York Times best-selling author Dixie Shaw grew up in sight of the burned out ruins of the old Longstreet mansion and heard the stories of murder and mayhem still buried in its ashes. She always wondered if the mystery had inspired her writing career that took her out of the town and away from the mother who was more like a stranger than anything else.


   Now back in town to bury the woman who raised her, Dixie finds that everything she thought she knew about herself is a lie. When she finds a box with the blackened treasures she dug up within the foundation of the old house, she remembers her mother telling her they’d been thrown away. Shortly thereafter, someone filled the space within the foundation with prickly pear. Now she suspects they were planted to keep her out.


   Determined to find the truth, she enlists the aid of Dr. Roy Bradley who teaches at the community college and comes highly recommended as a certified genealogical researcher. When he turns up more questions than answers, Dixie doesn’t know where to turn or who to trust.


   Are the answers she needs buried in the ruins of the old Longstreet house? Someone thinks so, and she intends to beat them at their own game. 


Keeping Promises


   June twenty-third, nineteen thirty-four, at ten-fifteen in the morning—that’s when they took us away in the back of the police car. Naomi, who was eight, held our little brother Neil in her arms. At two, he didn’t understand what was happening. Four-year-old Norma really didn’t understand either, but she knew it wasn’t anything good and hid her face in my skirt all the way to the police station, where a welfare worker questioned us. Or rather, she questioned me, Nadine, the oldest. I was eleven, almost twelve, but I’d felt a lot older lately.


   Within days, all the children are scattered, and Nadine, too old to be adopted, spends the next six years being shuffled from one foster home to another. As soon as she turns eighteen, she walks away from the latest disaster and talks her way into nursing school. Now she’s free and has a good career, but she’s can't forget her promise to her younger siblings who were snatched away by a bureaucratic system of faceless people who ruined more lives than they helped.


   When she meets Dr. Paul Bradford on his first day at Greenway Memorial Hospital, she lets down her guard and soon regrets it. Falling in love isn’t in the cards for her, not until she keeps that promise she made over a dozen years ago: I swear I’ll find you. I’ll find all of you and bring you home again.


   And she has to keep that promise before she can think about anything else.