The defining moments of young Ethan Opochensky's life occurred during the summer he spent with his cousin Alice in the small, rural town of Meddersville. Three children disappeared that summer, his cousin among them. Nine-year-old Ethan believes he knows the killer, but his story is so fanciful, it is dismissed out of hand. Twenty-five years later, children are once again disappearing in Meddersville. Ethan returns to Meddersville to separate fact from childish fantasy, to discover the truth behind Alice's disappearance, and to bring her killer to justice. The Summer We Lost Alice is a story of loss and grief, of courage, of family, and ultimately, of healing and the triumph of an enduring spirit. Full length novel. Contains paranormal elements, a trace of mild language, no explicit sex. No child violence. Keywords: witch, reincarnation, dog, psychic, skeptic, murder, evil, love, family, mystery, death, afterlife. * * * From the author: My mother's name was "Alice." She grew up dirt poor on a small Kansas farm. We don't have too many photos from that time, but we do have two that stand out. The first is a snapshot of my mother as a little girl, with her older sister and a dog. My mother wears a cereal box on her head like a crown. This photo inspired the scene in the book where Alice crowns herself Queen of Bohemia. My family on my father's side came from Bohemia, so there's another family connection (and the explanation for my strangely vowel-impoverished last name). The second photo shows my mother, probably about age five, with her two older sisters. The sisters stand behind her in their black dresses, looking very dour, while my mother in her light-colored dress plays with her fingers and smiles winsomely at the camera. That's the spirit I wanted to capture in my fictional Alice. My first book, Risen, is a supernatural thriller about people coming back from the dead, not as zombies, but perfectly healthy. The idea was to explore the question: What is the value of life without death? The Summer We Lost Alice (a more mainstream book, not a horror novel) is also about rebirth. I was able to play with differing viewpoints about the afterlife, from the skeptic's point of view (Ethan, in the story) to the spiritual believer's (Heather) with a touch of traditional faith (Flo). It's a story of loss and how it destroys a family, and how that family manages to come together to heal itself. All wrapped in the guise of a paranormal mystery/thriller. And there's a dog, of course. Old Boo. Got to have a dog.

"The coming of Spring usually means renewal, but for Linnea Rutledge, Spring 2020 threatens stagnation. Linnea faces another layoff, this time from the aquarium she adores. For her--and her family--finances, emotions, and health teeter at the brink. To complicate matters, her new love interest, Gordon, struggles to return to the Isle of Palms from England. Meanwhile, her old flame, John, turns up from California and is quarantining next door. She tries to ignore him, but when he sends her plaintive notes in the form of paper airplanes, old sparks ignite. When Gordon at last reaches the island, Linnea wonders--is it possible to love two men at the same time? Love in the time of the coronavirus proves challenging, at times humorous, and ever changing. Relationships are redefined, friendships made and broken, and marriages tested. As the weeks turn to months, and another sea turtle season comes to a close, Linnea learns there are more meaningful lessons learned during this summer than opportunities lost, that summer is a time of wonder, and that the exotic lives in our own back yards ... Linnea and the Rutledge family continue to face their challenges with the strength, faith, and commitment"--

SIX SHORT STORIES served up with a twist. From “The Best Fishing Ever”—a fish story with no fish, a horror story with no horror—to the title story, “The Murmuring Field”—a tale about love, loss, passion and alien visitors—here are six journeys into the strange, the wonderful and the bizarre. “Hafford House” is a haunted house tale where justice is served up hot, where the barrier between this world and the next is as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke. At thirteen, “Cassie” knows her future, and that is why she screams. A symphony conductor runs afoul of a local witch with the insidious ability to implant ear worms. Could "Polly Wolly Doodle" literally drive a man insane? Mankind has twelve minutes to exist before annihilation by a rogue asteroid. The public has no clue, but in the offices of a computer street-mapping company, a video technician discovers an oddly-garbed man standing in six places at once, staring at the sky, “Photobombing the Apocalypse.” Keywords: phantom, supernatural, Cassandra, fate, hex, alien, Twilight Zone, science fiction, fantasy

New town, new friends, new guy . . . and an old bucket list. The past haunts the present in the newest installation in the Love, Lucas universe. After her dad is sentenced to prison time, seventeen-year-old Lucy Nelson and her mother move across the country to start over in the town—and farmhouse—where her mother grew up. Once settled, Lucy is determined to keep her mind off anything “real” and decides to pass the time by reading a stack of her mother’s childhood books, which has sat in her grandmother’s home for decades. When Lucy finds her mom’s old summer bucket list shoved between the pages of a worn copy of Anne of Green Gables, she’s eager to write her own list to escape her inevitable summer boredom. Feeling brave, she fills it with challenges she’d never normally do and also adds the one thing that her mother had never crossed off the original list: Visit Susan’s grave. When Lucy befriends Mira and her handsome cousin, Jack, she begins to feel almost normal as they help check off her list. When she asks her mother about Susan, she refuses to talk about her. As Lucy falls for Jack, she yearns to tell him the truth about her dad and her old life but lies about everything instead. When her friends see through the lies and her mom reaches her breaking point over questions about Susan, Lucy must learn to trust her friends, try to bring peace to her mother, and to somehow find the courage to forgive her dad.

Adam has spent his summers at his grandmother's rustic cabin on Three Bird Lake. But this year is different. Dad won't be with them, and there's a new girl next door named Alice. After he discovers notes that hint at a hidden treasure and a secret love from long ago, Adam calls on Alice to help find answers.