Tag: Books

“Harbor House” Goes Live One Week From Today

 I just want to update everyone on my forthcoming new collection, “Harbor House and Other Dark Tales.” The eBook is now available to pre-order on Amazon (Click here). Publication date is only one week away – September 6th. The paperback version will be forthcoming.

“Harbor House” includes a varied collection of sixteen all-new stories. Below are the titles…

Harbor House

Love and Hate

The Next Door Neighbor

Believe

Big Carmine

Room 111 

A Permanent Solution

So Many Books, So Little Time

And Then She Was Gone

I Would Do Anything for You

That Stuff Will Kill You

A Morning Walk in the Woods

Dwayne

Sorry for Your Loss

Bad Luck

Jacqueline

Below is a short excerpt…

1902

     Everyone in the coastal town of Laurel, Maine, knew the history of Harbor House. Built in 1902 along the rocky shores of the Atlantic, Harbor House has survived over one hundred years of cold winters, snowstorms, icy winds, and death. The large house was built by Joshua Holt and his two sons, Jedediah and Samuel. One year after its completion the Holt family, which included Joshua’s wife Becky and youngest child, Kate, were all killed while boating in the Atlantic. An unexpected and merciless storm capsized their boat.

     Legend has it Joshua was knocked unconscious while Jedediah and Samuel both drowned attempting to save their mother and sister. No one knows for sure what happened since there were no witnesses or survivors. What is known is the bodies of the entire family were washed ashore and eventually buried on their large property. Their names carved into pieces of wood used as markers. 

     After the tragic death of the Holt family, Harbor House remained empty until 1910. During that time, stories spread, mostly by the local teens, that Harbor House was haunted by the spirits of the Holt family. Some kids claimed to have seen Joshua’s ghost in the house crying and calling out to his wife, Becky. Older teens and a few adults claimed to have heard the oldest son, Jedediah, scream out the name of Eleanor Crane, his bride to be. Eleanor was supposed to have been on the boat trip with the Holt family. She bowed out at the last moment because of illness. What is known is that two months after the Holt family drowned, Eleanor, who had been distraught over her fiancé’s death, was found dead. Her body draped over Jedediah’s grave. The cause of death was cyanide, an ingredient her father used in his photography studio. Rumors spread she was pregnant with Jedediah’s baby at the time of her death.

 If you have not pre-ordered yet, why not do so now?

Publication Day

It’s here!

DARK SECRETS is now available as both an eBook and paperback at Amazon.

Ten brand new devilishly criminal short stories. In The New Wave Church you will meet Bobby James Knotts a small time criminal who hits it big after taking an on-line course to become a minister. Money and women come his way, but so does the road to death’s doorway. A gang of tough Brooklyn teens rule their Junior High School classroom, that is until they meet Norman. For Olivia, hiring your success starved lover to kill your husband may not be such A Good Deal. This and seven other short stories will all be revealed.

Now on sale!

Pre-Order DARK SECRETS

My new collection of short stories is now available for pre-order on Amazon. A paperback version will follow shortly. Publication date is September 22nd. Click here to place your order.

Dark Secrets Book Cover Reveal

Dark Secrets, my upcoming collection of short stories will be out late summer/early fall of this year. The book will consist of ten short stories all with one thing in common… secrets! Very dark secrets best never revealed. What is revealed for the first time anywhere is the book cover. I hope you like it.

This fall season will have some very DARK SECRETS

Missing My Trips to the Library

One of the things I miss doing the most since the pandemic hit us is going to the library. I used to go once a week, mostly to either the Clearwater Library or the Dunedin Library, sometimes both on the same day. It was always an adventure whether I was doing research or looking for a book to read for pleasure.  Sometimes you found a book long out-of-print. It was like discovering gold.

There is one pleasure I still get from the library these Covid days and that is Kanopy. If you’re not familiar with Kanopy, you’re missing out. Kanopy is a streaming service available through public libraries and universities. It offers a wide variety of films: classic, modern, foreign, documentaries and much more. There are more than 3,000 films in the catalog and more added each week.  All you need is a library card from your local library branch to get free access and enjoy its cinematic pleasures. It’s available by downloading an app on your desktop or mobile phone, and via Roku.

Book Review: Tampa Bay Noir

There is something comfortable or maybe not so comfortable reading dark tales about where you live. So I was excited to discover “Tampa Bay Noir.”  I was equally disappointed by the book. Not because the stories are bad, they are not, but if you looking for noir, well, at best there are a few noir lite tales. With the title, and the long running series that it is part of, I was expecting darker tales. The stories give us a view of modern Tampa Bay filled with subdivisions, malls and homes by the water. Edited by Collette Bennett, book reviewer for the Tampa Bay Times, who contributes a story,  the collection gets off with a good start with Michael Connelly who brings the iconic Harry Bosch to Tampa Bay to help an old friend. Lori Roy follows with another interesting tale, one of the darker ones. Other highlights include stories by Tim Dorsey, Lisa Unger, Ace Atkins, Gale Massey, Danny Lopez, and the previously mentioned Collette Bennett. There is not a bad story, but the dark noir streets are missing.

Book Review: Love it or Hate it – it’s Brian DePalma

snakes

Published by Hard Case Crime, Are Snakes Necessary? is Brian DePalma’s first novel. It was co-written with journalist Susan Lehman. Like DePalma’s films, I think people are either going to love this book or hate it.

Okay, first things first. I am a big Brian DePalma fan. Ever since I first saw Sisters way back when. Accusations of Hitchcock imitating have haunted him throughout his career. Well, artists have always borrowed styles from other artists and in film, few are better to steal from than Alfred Hitchcock. Are Snakes Necessary? is a quick thrill ride: a political thriller wrapped in a noir like piece of pulp fiction that much like his films is stylized and at times disjointed. Not surprisingly, there is a cinematic flow and much of the book is dialogue driven. In the words of Elmore Leonard, they left out the boring stuff.