Broken Chord
A Music Row Mystery
Sarah Ann Boswell is in the throes of a mid-life crisis when she celebrates her 50th birthday with the four friends who make up her prayer group. She does not share with them the crisis enveloping her. As she passed the courthouse earlier in the day, John Bennett Boswell was descending the steps, still handsome, little touched by age in his middle years, the husband she lost to a younger woman. And she has just lost something almost as important -- her job. “Hell, I’m having a full blown crisis of mids, mid-life, mid-menopause, mid-career,” she says despairingly on her way home from the party.
Hours later the Prayer Group is again gathered around Sarah Ann as she hovers between life and death, a crisis prompted by her own hand.
The hospital stay becomes the catalyst for a renewal of Sarah Ann’s spirit and future. Her roommate, Jill Edgerton, offers Sarah Ann a job in her Music Row management agency in Nashville. Within the first year, Sarah Ann becomes a partner in the agency. And the agency leaps into the big time when Jared Parson is signed to a contract.
The "new Garth Brooks" rave critics when the handsome and talented Parson debuts at a Nashville showcase. His meteoric success makes him the toast of Nashville and Edgerton Group the envy of Music Row. Music producer Arliss Hemming helps shape Parson's success, but the music industry veteran observes a troubling side of the charismatic young Texan. It is a side that over time is revealed to Sarah Ann, but a side Jill remains blind to as her infatuation for the young star eclipses everything else in her life. Sarah Ann cannot halt the spiral of her business partner. And when Jill Edgerton is found brutally murdered it is Sarah Ann becomes a prime suspect and the stalkers next target.
Sarah Ann lays out her fears to the one person she is confident can help – John Bennett Boswell. Her concerns and their business interaction will reignite a spark Sarah Ann believed long cooled.
And always there is the support of the Prayer Group, three eclectic and witty women and her best friend, Willie Dell Winston. “They had been a prayer group for as long as any of them could remember, since their early elementary school days at St. Theresa’s when most of their prayers were petitions for God to strike dead, or at least permanently disable, this nun or that nun, depending on what travail had befallen one or the other of the Prayer Group during the school day.”
Broken Chord is the story of long friendship steeped in southern culture; of heady success in a glamorous industry; and a fall from grace that will imperil both hard-won success and the lives of those who share in its triumph.
Broken Chord is being published by WordCrafts Press and is set for release in spring, 2018.
Hours later the Prayer Group is again gathered around Sarah Ann as she hovers between life and death, a crisis prompted by her own hand.
The hospital stay becomes the catalyst for a renewal of Sarah Ann’s spirit and future. Her roommate, Jill Edgerton, offers Sarah Ann a job in her Music Row management agency in Nashville. Within the first year, Sarah Ann becomes a partner in the agency. And the agency leaps into the big time when Jared Parson is signed to a contract.
The "new Garth Brooks" rave critics when the handsome and talented Parson debuts at a Nashville showcase. His meteoric success makes him the toast of Nashville and Edgerton Group the envy of Music Row. Music producer Arliss Hemming helps shape Parson's success, but the music industry veteran observes a troubling side of the charismatic young Texan. It is a side that over time is revealed to Sarah Ann, but a side Jill remains blind to as her infatuation for the young star eclipses everything else in her life. Sarah Ann cannot halt the spiral of her business partner. And when Jill Edgerton is found brutally murdered it is Sarah Ann becomes a prime suspect and the stalkers next target.
Sarah Ann lays out her fears to the one person she is confident can help – John Bennett Boswell. Her concerns and their business interaction will reignite a spark Sarah Ann believed long cooled.
And always there is the support of the Prayer Group, three eclectic and witty women and her best friend, Willie Dell Winston. “They had been a prayer group for as long as any of them could remember, since their early elementary school days at St. Theresa’s when most of their prayers were petitions for God to strike dead, or at least permanently disable, this nun or that nun, depending on what travail had befallen one or the other of the Prayer Group during the school day.”
Broken Chord is the story of long friendship steeped in southern culture; of heady success in a glamorous industry; and a fall from grace that will imperil both hard-won success and the lives of those who share in its triumph.
Broken Chord is being published by WordCrafts Press and is set for release in spring, 2018.
Good-bye, Gadsden
Gadsden, Alabama - 1943. World War II is being waged on three continents, far from the small Alabama city where two gold stars hang in the front window of the Winstead residence. The Winsteads sent two sons to fight on two different fronts. The oldest son returns home from North Africa that same year to be buried in a community cemetery. Another son returns from the Pacific only months later, an amputee. The family’s memorable story and the changes wrought by the war on the Winsteads, their neighbors and their southern community are recounted by the youngest son, John.
Still in high school, John takes a summer job at a downtown dry cleaners and is seduced by the owner, Sylvia Barnes, a married women six years his senior. He falls deeply in love with her. Fearing retribution when the affair is discovered, John’s lover flees Gadsden only to be found by John several months later. Their brief reconciliation, culminating in a night of passionate lovemaking, ends with John’s hurtful accusations and Sylvia’s departure. Despondent and guilt-filled, John implores his best friend to leave high school and join the Army Air Corps with him.
After training together, the two friends are separated, only to be reunited during the waning days of the war. They serve together as part of a crew of diverse and colorful airmen whose solidarity and courage will be fiercely tested as the air war rains death and destruction on Japan from the skies. When their B-29 is struck by flak and crashes following a bombing raid, the two friends find themselves perilously adrift in a life raft. The raft is spotted by a passing Japanese fighter, marking the end of war for John, and nearly the end of his life.
Ailing in spirit as well as body, John returns to Alabama, still a teen, matured to manhood by the raw brutality of war and the loss of most of the men with whom he served. Even as he begins college he renews the search or Sylvia, a journey that takes John far from Gadsden and ends a decade later across an operating table in a rural hospital in the mountains of Appalachia.
Available in softcover and Kindle and Nook download
Still in high school, John takes a summer job at a downtown dry cleaners and is seduced by the owner, Sylvia Barnes, a married women six years his senior. He falls deeply in love with her. Fearing retribution when the affair is discovered, John’s lover flees Gadsden only to be found by John several months later. Their brief reconciliation, culminating in a night of passionate lovemaking, ends with John’s hurtful accusations and Sylvia’s departure. Despondent and guilt-filled, John implores his best friend to leave high school and join the Army Air Corps with him.
After training together, the two friends are separated, only to be reunited during the waning days of the war. They serve together as part of a crew of diverse and colorful airmen whose solidarity and courage will be fiercely tested as the air war rains death and destruction on Japan from the skies. When their B-29 is struck by flak and crashes following a bombing raid, the two friends find themselves perilously adrift in a life raft. The raft is spotted by a passing Japanese fighter, marking the end of war for John, and nearly the end of his life.
Ailing in spirit as well as body, John returns to Alabama, still a teen, matured to manhood by the raw brutality of war and the loss of most of the men with whom he served. Even as he begins college he renews the search or Sylvia, a journey that takes John far from Gadsden and ends a decade later across an operating table in a rural hospital in the mountains of Appalachia.
Available in softcover and Kindle and Nook download
Deadline in Dallas
Ripped from the front page headlines of today's newspapers, Deadline in Dallas takes the reader to the heart of the war on drugs and the murderous chaos on America's southern border. The assassination of a crusading Brownsville, Texas newspaper editor catapults Dallas television anchor Lesley Rowan into an investigation of a drug cartel headed by the enigmatic Christo, a ruthless and streetwise Columbian narcotics lord and his Mexican partners.
Prompted by information provided by a mysterious source, Lesley seeks the blessings of KDDL-TV news director Mac Withers to begin investigating allegations of connections by powerful people in Dallas to the Christo drug cartel. Withers employs a disgraced former FBI agent and sometime journalist to assist Lesley, a man Lesley immediately dislikes. She is prepared to dismiss Whit Terrell's efforts until he uncovers a conspiracy to hide millions of dollars in drug revenues behind the vaulted business veneer of an influential Dallas family.
Surprising Withers and her co-workers, Lesley announces her engagement to the mayor of Dallas, Grant Stewart, heir to an oil fortune accumulated by his colorful grandfather and namesake. Flush with happiness, Lesley finds herself swept up in preparations for her marriage into one of the city's wealthiest and most socially prominent families.
When Terrell is murdered by operatives of the Mexican Cartel linked to Christo, Lesley must conclude the investigation alone, despite growing danger to her and the troubling knowledge of where that investigation is heading.
Startled and saddened by what she learns, Lesley anchors a series of KDDL reports that reveal drug connections reaching south from Dallas through Mexico to Colombia, and north from Dallas to Chicago and a Mafia kingpin, and back to Dallas to the family of the man she loves, a circuitous route littered with ruined reputations, wasted lives and murder.
Prompted by information provided by a mysterious source, Lesley seeks the blessings of KDDL-TV news director Mac Withers to begin investigating allegations of connections by powerful people in Dallas to the Christo drug cartel. Withers employs a disgraced former FBI agent and sometime journalist to assist Lesley, a man Lesley immediately dislikes. She is prepared to dismiss Whit Terrell's efforts until he uncovers a conspiracy to hide millions of dollars in drug revenues behind the vaulted business veneer of an influential Dallas family.
Surprising Withers and her co-workers, Lesley announces her engagement to the mayor of Dallas, Grant Stewart, heir to an oil fortune accumulated by his colorful grandfather and namesake. Flush with happiness, Lesley finds herself swept up in preparations for her marriage into one of the city's wealthiest and most socially prominent families.
When Terrell is murdered by operatives of the Mexican Cartel linked to Christo, Lesley must conclude the investigation alone, despite growing danger to her and the troubling knowledge of where that investigation is heading.
Startled and saddened by what she learns, Lesley anchors a series of KDDL reports that reveal drug connections reaching south from Dallas through Mexico to Colombia, and north from Dallas to Chicago and a Mafia kingpin, and back to Dallas to the family of the man she loves, a circuitous route littered with ruined reputations, wasted lives and murder.
Ahmad and the Donkey
Tears run silently down the face of eight-year-old Ahmad as he hears the branch crack cruelly on the back of the lame donkey. Then terror clinches his heart as he hears his oldest brother, Omar, angrily rail at the donkey and threatens to return in the morning and kill the animal.
Ahmad vows to save the donkey. He slips out of his mud-walled home in a village shadowed by the Middle Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Covered by the new wool jellabah his mother has woven for him, he slings his prayer rug across his back and sets out. Despite the agonizing pain in his foot, Donkey follows obediently as the boy leads him up the steep mountain path that will take them over the top of the mountain and down the other side to the road to Marrakesh. It is in Marrakesh Ahmad hopes to find the British woman he has heard whispered about who has a sanctuary for donkeys no longer able to toil in fields or pull heavily laden carts.
When Ahmad and Donkey seek shelter in a cave against the blowing snow, they are terrified by a man who slips out of the shadows. Bearded and handsome, the stranger introduces himself as Ali, a Faikir, a holy man and healer. Ali applies his skills to ease Donkey’s pain and agrees to accompany the boy and the donkey to Marrakesh on a journey that will be beset by danger.
With the approval of his father and village elders, Omar sets out in pursuit of his younger brother promising to return Ahmad and the donkey safely to their village. It is a promise Omar does not intend to keep.
Still distant from Marrakesh, Ahmad and Ali are waylaid by a band of brigands. Donkey must prove his bravery and save his young master and the kind stranger from certain death by placing himself in peril.
Exhausted, the three companions finally reach Marrakesh and make their way through the narrow alleys of the ancient media toward the safety of the donkey sanctuary. But lurking in the shadows of a booth in the media is Omar, clutching a stolen scimitar. It will be up to Ali to save Ahmad and Donkey and in doing so he will be forced to reveal his true identity.
Ahmad vows to save the donkey. He slips out of his mud-walled home in a village shadowed by the Middle Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Covered by the new wool jellabah his mother has woven for him, he slings his prayer rug across his back and sets out. Despite the agonizing pain in his foot, Donkey follows obediently as the boy leads him up the steep mountain path that will take them over the top of the mountain and down the other side to the road to Marrakesh. It is in Marrakesh Ahmad hopes to find the British woman he has heard whispered about who has a sanctuary for donkeys no longer able to toil in fields or pull heavily laden carts.
When Ahmad and Donkey seek shelter in a cave against the blowing snow, they are terrified by a man who slips out of the shadows. Bearded and handsome, the stranger introduces himself as Ali, a Faikir, a holy man and healer. Ali applies his skills to ease Donkey’s pain and agrees to accompany the boy and the donkey to Marrakesh on a journey that will be beset by danger.
With the approval of his father and village elders, Omar sets out in pursuit of his younger brother promising to return Ahmad and the donkey safely to their village. It is a promise Omar does not intend to keep.
Still distant from Marrakesh, Ahmad and Ali are waylaid by a band of brigands. Donkey must prove his bravery and save his young master and the kind stranger from certain death by placing himself in peril.
Exhausted, the three companions finally reach Marrakesh and make their way through the narrow alleys of the ancient media toward the safety of the donkey sanctuary. But lurking in the shadows of a booth in the media is Omar, clutching a stolen scimitar. It will be up to Ali to save Ahmad and Donkey and in doing so he will be forced to reveal his true identity.