Novels
Women of the House - It’s 1923 and Detective Sadie Haywood is Baltimore’s first female detective. She’s also Baltimore’s first lesbian detective, a fact she’s happy to keep to herself - until a mysterious woman at the heart of her next case threatens to complicate everything.
The men on the force don’t take Sadie seriously, and to prove it she’s been made the sole member of the police department’s “Women’s Unit” - a vaguely-defined bureau where her boss assigns cases of little importance. Unimportant cases like the death of Elizabeth James. The easiest explanation for the young woman’s untimely demise, and the one the medical examiner wants to cite in his report, is alcohol poisoning, an all-too common problem during Prohibition.
But the evidence doesn’t add up for Sadie.
In order to uncover how Elizabeth really died, and earn the respect she deserves, Sadie will have to learn the secrets of the femme fatale whose home Elizabeth died in - a rich madam running the only brothel in Baltimore catering to an all-female clientele and for whom Sadie develops feelings. Sadie has to keep a clear head as chaos consumes a colorful cast of characters. She must figure out whose sordid past is behind them, and who is only getting started on their life of crime. If she doesn’t, someone else will end up dead.
Mystery, 80,000 words
The Agitated State -- THE AGITATED STATE tells the true, little-known story of the biggest kidnapping plot in United States history.
It’s July 1917 and Augusta has no interest in the war the U.S. has just joined against Germany, or the rumors of bomb-throwing anarchists intent on sabotaging the war effort. All she wants is to live a quiet life with her husband in their cabin high above the booming copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona.
Unfortunately for Augie, the Army - greedy for munitions - demands a billion pounds of copper from the Copper Queen Mine. The Queen, as the largest copper mine in the world, is up for the task - but production is quickly threatened by an increasingly volatile labor dispute.
The situation is already tense when an explosion rips through the mine, killing dozens of miners, including Augusta’s husband. Miners blame the deaths on the dangerous working conditions and call a strike, while mine executives pin the blame on anarchists. But Augusta, a fiery and defiant woman, blames everyone - and vows to avenge her husband’s death.
This 100,000-word literary fiction follows Augusta’s quest for revenge through the mayhem of the Bisbee Deportation, during which mine executives kidnapped and deported 1,300 striking miners, leaving them for dead in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.
Literary fiction, 100,000 words.
The Southern Wall -- The last thing wallflower Ann wants is to be thrust into the middle of her small Arizona town's never-ending argument about the 15-foot concrete wall that runs the length of the U.S.-Mexico border - but that's exactly what happens when her troubled younger sister tries to blow it up.
Ann is a 33-year-old reporter for a local newspaper who is eager to embrace the status quo and content spending her workdays doing as little as possible, spending her nights drinking with her best friend, and spending her weekends helping her widowed mother and unhinged sister around the family ranch. Her life is turned upside down when her sister – distraught over her Mexican girlfriend’s harassment at the hands of a border service agent – hastily enacts an unsuccessful plan to bomb the wall. The event, its aftermath, and the town’s treatment of her family forces Ann to reconsider her acceptance of the wall, her trust in law enforcement, and her previously untested belief that she would do anything for her family.
Literary fiction, 87,000 words.
Daughters of the West -- Adolescent Lee has the decorating taste of a burgeoning hoarder, the social calendar of an agoraphobic, and wants nothing more than to find a way out of her hometown -- or so she thinks.
It’s clear to Lee from the get-go that she doesn’t fit in with the other inhabitants of her desert town: her teachers know Lee primarily as the doe-eyed kid who can’t stay awake in class; Lee’s peers seem equally content ignoring or tormenting her; her parents are starting to notice their daughter exhibiting alarming anti-social tendencies; and Lee herself is considering going to extraordinary lengths to get out. As the years go by, Lee decides that finding a local silver mine’s lost legendary stash is her best means of escape. Lee’s quest for the silver is ultimately unsuccessful, but her struggle to find it highlights themes of dependence, obsession, and insecurity, which are made painfully more apparent by the protagonist’s young age.
Literary fiction, in progress.