In the Works

COMING:

A NEW BELLE BANNON SERIES

Meet Belle Bannon:

Belle is a hunting guide for a national outfitter headquartered in Park City, Utah. Her job takes him all over the western states leading trophy hunters on expeditions to find elk, bear, bighorn sheep and wild hogs. She’s highly skilled in the use of firearms and hunting bows. Belle’s an expert skier and sometimes works ski patrol at the Park City Resort when not on a job for the outfitter.

During her travels, Belle sometimes finds herself in the center of harrowing situations where she must use her skills to protect the innocent from those who would do them harm.

Born and raised in Park City, at the age of 12 her father unexpectedly moved the family to Pittsburgh’s hardscrapple South Side Flats. As a teen Belle was part of a street gang and did time in juvie for maiming a kid in a street fight. An uncle brought her back to Park City, took her in and straightened her out.

Now at twenty-nine, the ruthlessness required to survive in the Flats sometimes surfaces when confronted by those who threaten her or others. At juvie she was diagnosed with IED, Intermittent Explosive Disorder–a behavioral disorder characterized by explosive outbursts of anger and violence, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand, aka the “Incredible Hulk” disease.

She works hard to keep this affliction under control.

So far she’s only been partially successful.

 

THE SUNDANCE REVENGE (Belle No. 1)

January, park City, Utah. The famous Sundance Film Festival is in full swing and the town is packed with Hollywood celebrities. Former combat Marine, Belle Bannon, (think a female Jack Reacher), suspects that a string of fatal accidents occurring during the festival resulting in the deaths of celebrities, politicians, and Belle’s friend, an innocent young girl, are actually murder. Suspicious, Belle follows a line of clues leading to a troubled avenger. Unknown to Belle, she’s become the next target.

An abandoned silver mine (below) is the scene of the harrowing final battle between Belle and the killer.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                  

THE COMANCHE CODE (Belle No. 2)

Belle happens to be in the Texas panhandle when she learns that her sister, Jenny, has been kidnapped from a nearby western artifacts museum where the girl works as an intern. The kidnappers give Nora Parker Yates, the museum curator, seventy-two hours to decode a series of Comanche symbols on Chief Quanah Parker’s war lance leading to the location of a mysterious jade box. Belle teams up with Nora to try to find the box and bring Jenny back home safely. If they fail to retrieve the box in time, Jenny will die. They come to learn the kidnappers are really interested in the contents of the box, a long-lost secret agreement signed by Teddy Roosevelt and the Chinese ambassador in 1905. Belle and Nora not only have to deal with the kidnappers, but also lethal Chinese agents who are willing to do anything, including killing innocent Americans, to prevent the secret agreement from surfacing. BUT, Belle faces an impossible dilemma: if she and Nora survive the Chinese agents, beat the ticking clock, find the secret document, and save Jenny from the kidnappers, the end result could be an all-out war with China.

COMANCHE CHIEF QUANAH PARKER’S ACTUAL WAR LANCE

There’s a secret code beaded onto the lance. Can you see it?

 

 

COMING . . .

                          THE STASH

 

Tom Booker (from One to Go) is now a Washington D.C. public defender and must defend a 16-year-old boy charged with murdering his uncle, who as a youth led a life outside the law before he straightened up and ultimately became a U.S. Park Policeman.

A stash of Pablo Escobar’s drug money totaling $150 million buried by the uncle thirty years earlier when he was a teenager assisting Escobar’s operation holds the key to the boy’s defense. Tom must find the stash in a matter of days, or the boy will have no chance to prove his innocence.

The real killer, a former Escobar driver know for his Robin Hood tattoo, is now out of prison searching for the stash which he believes is rightfully his.

The uncle left a series of clues to the stash’s location tied to various national monuments in the Capital area. With the clock ticking, Tom and his young client embark on a high-stakes scavenger hunt to find the stash before the angry killer, who is ready to murder Tom, the boy, and anyone else who stands in his way.

 

COMING . . .

THE WORKSHOP

(YA Fantasy Adventure)

Nick Stahr, a distraught teenage African-American boy, joins his pals on a harrowing quest to discover why his father abandoned him six years earlier and disappeared in northern Canada. Nick’s journey requires him to do what most believe is impossible: STEAL THE TOP SECRET FORMULA FOR COCA COLA FROM ITS IMPREGNABLE SAFE! ( See below.)

The Coke formula, over one hundred years old, contains a hidden code that leads Nick and his friends to a mysterious cave hidden deep in the Canadian Arctic where Nick’s dad disappeared. The deserted cave holds many secrets, threatens their lives, and offers a time tunnel back to Eleventh Century Scotland where the true answers to the fate of Nick’s dad can be found. There he’s threatened by evil forces including a powerful sorcerer who can morph into a raven. There also he finds first love.

Stacking one amazing revelation upon another, Nick’s journey ultimately reveals the true story of the “real” Santa Claus, and it ain’t singing elves and dancing candy canes. Nick’s destiny is changed forever.