My Books

Ruthless, a crime thriller

RUTHLESS is a domestic thriller full of mystery and suspense about a family struggling to stay together after a devastating death.

Samantha and her sister, Lori, are considered royalty in this suburb of Cleveland, as their grandfather has been mayor for 50 years, their uncle is the Chief of Police, and their aunt manages the city bank.

Everyone understands that the family can do no wrong.

But when Lori dies in a bizarre boating accident with a young man no one in her family had met, only Samantha wonders how she ended up dead in Lake Erie in the middle of the night.

The family worries more about political scandal than about their dead loved one. Even her father, a cop, assumes Lori was up to no good.

When Francine, a plucky reporter, digs into the story, the clues she discovers lead her down a path of death and mayhem. She and Samantha uncover sexual predators and a criminal conspiracy that is more than they can handle.

By working with the father of the young man who died with Lori in the boat, they draw the ire of the quiet suburb’s police force. The three of them must fight together to discover the truth.

But the truth takes them over the thin blue line into a battle for their lives.

I Guess I Released Another Book Today
Book 1 of the HIVE Series

In HIVE, none of your options are good.

Leah, the daughter of a corporate executive, lives a privileged life in a hive-like city built after nearly all of humanity is wiped out by climate disasters, plague and war. The corporation manages all of society with flawless efficiency, and once Leah opts-in to the terms of service, she’ll be one of the lucky ones enjoying the fruit of other-people’s labor, just as her parents planned.

But Leah hopes to spend more time with Abel, the son of the Chief Operating Officer. Leah’s feelings for Abel have grown stronger. Unfortunately, the corporation has different plans for the two teenagers.

When the corporate security team brutally kills innocent bystanders, Leah is awakened to the corporation’s ruthlessness. Now she wants nothing to do with her parents’ world.

Leah and Abel can only be together if they escape the city and make their way to the rumored settlements beyond the corporation’s reach. Escape won’t be easy: the corporation’s artificial intelligence tracks all movement throughout the city, searching for suspicious activity.

Their only hope is to connect with The Collective, the resistance group trying to overthrow the corporation and restore civil liberties.

All they have to do is pull it off to find a new life.

THE FORGETTABLE MARRIAGE OF LINA AND JOE , a rom-com in Cleveland.

MEET LINA, a young woman with a compulsion for excellence. Graduated with honors, an MBA, and nothing but success ahead. Her one weakness, it seems, is…

JOE, the come as you are, roll with the punches guy of her dreams. He’s got six years of community college under his belt, and things are starting to look up, especially because…

They’re getting married. But then they aren’t, because something happened.

Joe happened, is what happened, and Lina feels betrayed, RIGHT THERE ON THE ALTAR.

Lina runs from the church but falls and hits her head, waking up fine except that she no longer remembers Joe. Lina has a unique opportunity to start over, but it’s not that simple. (Life is never that simple.)

It’s a story about overcoming the fear of growing up, and the fear of becoming your parents. Lina and Joe have no choice but to face those fears and push through to learn what’s waiting for them on the other side.

For everybody else, it’s the amnesia love story that will make you forget every other amnesia love story.

A historical fantasy set in Detroit!

THE BLUE DJIN AND THE AMERICAN DREAM is like I Dream of Jeannie meets The Office

Two young men discover an all-powerful blue djin and battle for control of his powers in a Detroit Suburb in 1985

Marvin is fresh out of community college and convinced he’ll work his way out of the mailroom up to the executive offices. But his coworker, Jonathon, discovers an all-powerful blue djin—Bibi—who grants him three wishes.

Jonathon gains an unholy power and wields it ruthlessly.

Marvin is the only person who can stop him, but community college didn’t teach him how to solve this problem.

Marvin has no choice but to face this emerging evil power alone.

This novelette is a quick, fun read.

SALLY AND BILLY IN BABYLAND, is a worrisome fable about the future.

Children lost in a political nightmare. Adults acting like babies. A pussy-grabbing leader.

This fast-paced political satire will thrill you, and its parallels with our current world may worry you a bit.

Sally and Billy are siblings abandoned in the woods, and who fall under the control of Big Baby, a narcissistic despot who rules a dystopian place known as Babyland.

Big Baby has captured Sally and Billy’s cat, and he doesn’t like to share. But they are determined to save her, and must confront his loyal, diaper-wearing subjects, whose minds are clouded with gas lighting.

And these people are mean to cats.

Sally and Billy face grave danger in their struggle, and confront a deadly evil no child should ever know.

Even children who have been abandoned in the woods.

Amateur detective solving crimes around Detroit!

Welcome to Willieville is a novelette set in 1998 about a high school graduate, Willie, whose friend is murdered while they party on a warm Friday night, out behind the 7-Eleven.

He’s in a suburb north of Detroit where the primary mission of the police is to keep things just the way they are.

Willie, nearly killed in the attack that took his friend’s life, didn’t see who did it, so the police have little to go on, and assume that it was a drug deal gone bad.

Willie’s mother is doing her best, but when Willie challenges the police, she’d rather he not make trouble.

Forced to investigate on his own, Willie makes a terrible discovery about the murderer. He realizes that the town is not ready to hear what he has learned. In fact, they don’t like his attitude, and Willie is forced to grow up quickly.

It’s, like, ten stories.

TEN SHORT STORIES of ordinary events of ordinary lives which, upon closer inspection, are the extraordinary moments that make life exhilarating and exhausting, if only we realize what is happening.

In The Penny Box, a man tired from a lifetime of missed opportunity chooses the moment of his death, only to be upstaged yet again.

In The Trap, three fisherman become hunters when a bear raids their camp, and one of them must confront his crippling fear of life itself.

And in Keep Thee, a frustrated husband and father finds himself alone and defeated, but can a single moment of clarity make his life, or any life, worth living?

Composed over the better part of a lifetime, these stories claw at the elaborate fabric of lies woven to keep the underlying truth concealed.