My BOOKS
Dark Lady
Princess Nefasti has two main goals: to survive and to discover who is responsible for the death of her parents.
Young Princess Nefasti wakes to discover her father, the king, poisoned and her mother near death. The sole heiress to the ancient High Kingdom of Vadio, the king’s three brothers begin to plot and quarrel over who will become Regent and control the kingdom until she comes of age or dies. Their solution is to marry her off. Or kill her.
If this trio were not enough of a problem, the greedy surrounding kingdoms all want to gobble Vadio up, and their ambassadors scurry through the castle plotting and scheming.
Dark Days
Young Queen Nefasti’s hold on her throne is tenuous. Her powerful neighbor to the west has declared war, and her other neighbors want something in return for their offered aid, such as her hand in marriage and her kingdom.
Assassins lurk in the shadows while handsome suitors try to bribe her with gold and jewels. Her best friend and protector is leaving and one of her favorite ladies-in-waiting is threatening to commit suicide.
What else can go wrong for the young monarch?
Dark Knights
It has happened at last. Queen Nefasti’s friends are deserting her on all sides, treachery threatens from inside her own castle, and an invasion led by an old and angry acquaintance is knocking at the very gates to the Kingdom of Vadio.
Dark Magic has stirred up things best left alone. Nefasti has been given a final choice, marry The Lord High Protector’s son, or suffer dire consequences.
All of this threatens to ruin her 16th birthday celebrations, and probably end her life.
Queen's Pawn
On his way to study for the priesthood, Harow is mistaken for a bold and infamous duke. Instead of study, he finds himself thrust into action to rescue a beautiful Queen and her spoiled daughter as they flee the city.
Now, a rebel army is hot on their heels and Harow must keep his wits about him as he leads the small group of survivors to safety.
Queen's Man
Harow, mistaken for a duke, has spirited the High Queen Reginee and her daughter Desiree-Rose to safety in the mountainous land ruled by bold Duke Owaine. Now Owaine and Reginee are scheduled to be wed and the queen wants Harow to stand up for her at the ceremony. With a short supply of eligible men, Harow finds himself the target of several young ladies and a jealous Desiree-Rose who is already planning their wedding.
But Harow has other things on his mind as the queen’s brother and leader of the rebellion that overthrew the kingdom continues to plot with his allies close by just across the border. They want to stop the royal wedding at all cost, including murdering or kidnapping the queen and her daughter.
Queen's Game
With the queen safely married and his family joining him, Harow’s life should be back to normal. Instead, his fate leads him down a different path. He is still at odds with the princess, and he has a beautiful and deadly neighbor who raises dragons in her spare time.
Amongst duels, battles, and monsters, Harow is taxed with the assignment of assisting the princess in her campaign to choose a suitable suitor. When she is kidnapped and held by an evil magician, he leaps into action once again, leading a hunting party into a tower to rescue her.
With the princess safe and his world finally at peace, can Harow find his happily ever after?
The Housetrap Chronicles Vol 1
What happens when you dare pass through the warped door of Randolf C. Aloysius, Private Eye?
You enter the fantasy world of the Housetrap Chronicles, where anything can happen and usually does. Here are three stories from Randy’s well-worn case files:
Housetrap: A missing boyfriend, an elf on the run, and Martian Vampires? What is a private eye to do?
Dial M for Mudder: Locate a missing statue in the dismal swamps of Venus! No problem? Just assemble an expedition with a curvaceous assassin, a senior citizen, and a teenage guide.
House on Hollow Hill: What could be simpler, simply attend a high-fashion weekend in the country with your half-banshee secretary while posing as another couple, and keep a close eye on the erratic host? Why? Because someone is planning to murder him.
The Housetrap Chronicles Vol 2
What happens when you dare pass through the warped door of Randolf C. Aloysius, Private Eye?
You enter the fantasy world of the Housetrap Chronicles, where anything can happen and usually does. Here are three stories from Randy’s well-worn case files:
Hounds of Basalt Ville: Bertha’s baby brother is in trouble, and she convinces Randy to help. What are a few man-eating devil hounds and an irate goddess when you are a private eye?
Murder in the Rouge Mort: Mayhem and murder follow a dangerous client when she hires Randy to find her missing brother.
The Treasure of The Sarah Madder: Shanghaied by the Committee of Public Safety as part of a dangerous mission to locate a mysterious valuable cargo, P.I. Randy Aloysius finds himself traveling into unexplored country with a crew of amateurs.
The Housetrap Chronicles Vol 3
What happens when you dare pass through the warped door of Randolf C. Aloysius, Private Eye?
You enter the fantasy world of the Housetrap Chronicles, where anything can happen and usually does. Here are three stories from Randy's well-worn case files:
Menageries a Trois: Things are looking up for Randy C. Aloysius—and that makes him nervous. Instead of struggling to drum up some business, he’s got three cases on his hands. There might be a common thread uniting them, if only he can figure out who the real bad guy is.
Murder on the Disoriented Express: A reluctant Private Eyeball, Randy Aloysius, agrees to accompany and elderly elf and her attractive niece on a relaxing trip across the continent to the Wet Coast. They seem harmless enough, so what could go wrong?
Silence of the Sands: His secretary Bertha has gone missing, and so have her mother and a large tourist island. Randy has to find emergency transportation to the disaster zone and fast, if he has to rescue the lost damsels and ease their possible distress.
The Housetrap Chronicles Vol 4
What happens when you dare pass through the warped door of Randolf C. Aloysius, Private Eye?
You enter the fantasy world of the Housetrap Chronicles, where anything can happen and usually does. Here are three stories from Randy's well-worn case files:
Mid-Winter Cuckoos at Midnight:
Bertha's in danger and Randy to the rescue, if someone would save him! Bertha talks Randy into taking a case across the ocean where her cousin is charged with murder. Mayhem follows the pair through fog-shrouded streets.
The Road to Hell is Paved with Parsnips: Randy’s old, sometimes good buddy, Charlie, is accused of murder most foul, and Randy and Bertha must stash him away from the fingers of the law and discover the truth.
Twas the Week Before the Night: Holidaze Interruptus. Randy and Bertha are forced to undergo a dangerous mission on a rickety space service and repair vehicle in order to prevent ruthless space pirates from capturing an orphanage filled with small children and selling them as slaves to work in the asteroid mines.
Of Destiny's Daughter
Politics and uncommon sense collide when a spaceship appears over Ottawa, Canada. When a gigantic, damaged spaceship suddenly appears over Ottawa requesting assistance the world is thrown into confusion.
Why are they really here? If they are having problems, what caused the damage? Then there is the Thorncroft family: Paul is feeling depressed and gets sucked up into a spaceship. Lucile and her ex-military girlfriends are bored and looking for a fight, romance, or something to break up the monotony.
Their mother, Martha, is trying to hold the family together while she deals with her husband’s PTSD and alcoholism. Everyone else is trying to discover the alien’s secrets and befriend them, or destroy them and anyone who has dealings with them.
Hammer Across The Stars
Luck Lucy searches for adventure and maybe romance across the vastness of space. After leaving Earth to join the Rygeillian Navy and see the universe, Lucy Thorncroft finds herself hurtling from one adventure to another. Not much chance she’ll ever settle down and miss out on spaceships, alien monsters, evil empires, and exotic planets?
Lucy groaned inside. She hated being conveyed in blind. “Who are these kidnappers? How many of them are there? Do we know anything at all?” “Traddeshhee pirates, was what the transmission said. A large number of them. An army, was the description. The message was obviously sent in a panic. Get ready to drop.”
Of course: it figured. Who else would have characters with them approaching anything like old-fashioned pirates? Leave that up to the quarrelsome Traddeshhee to have rogue members among them.
Expeditions To Earth
Can Lucky Lucy convince Earth’s strong-arm government that joining with the aliens is the only way to save themselves?
Lucy Thorncroft finds herself hurtling back toward her home planet Earth, with a raucous shipload of old friends, and serious dangers, old and new, waiting to greet her,
Dear Reader: This story takes place in an alternative universe not unlike our own. You may even recognize some of the locations. My first wanderings into a full-blown Space Opera. I hope you will enjoy the adventures and the characters who crawled forth from my mind to populate it.
Toltec Dawn
Convert Fergus mac Ogma, a youthful Irish acolyte of the god, Tezcatlipoca, has a burning desire and will to become more than a native underling in a land controlled by the invaders from across the ocean. But Tezcatlipoca altars are scarlet from the living sacrifice of his Christian countrymen and the time is coming when his own blood might be demanded to seal his choice.
Captain Mixcoatl is settling in with his wife as commander of the Toltec fort at St Albans in the province of England. When the governor strips the province of troops to invade the continent, he’s left with a skeleton force to hold the colony against the opportunistic invasion of the Scots.
Rowena, the young Saxon girl, is fleeing England with her uncle the monk and attempting to reach the Continent across the Channel. Thwarted, her uncle dead, Rowena finds herself a slave in Mixcoatl’s household. But when she’s taken by Normans supporting the Scots she’ll have to decide where her loyalties lie.
Toltec Khan
Fergus, appointed Interrogator for the god Tezcatlipoca in England with the mandate to suppress or convert the native Christians, must find a way to work with the local priests of Tezcatlipoca and that god’s rival, Quetzalcoatl. With mounting feelings for Rowena, he finds himself trapped in the fort, and the rebel forces surrounding them while fending off his family.
Captain Mixcoatl’s loyalty is torn as his best friend throws in with the desperate governor and his scheme to turn the Toltec province into an independent kingdom. Outnumbered and beset, Mixcoatl must once again turn to the sly King of Gwynedd for assistance to raise a force to save England and the life of his pregnant wife.
Rowena, maid to Captain Mixcoatl’s wife, finds herself on the parapet with her mistress staring down at a rebel army. Facing the final assault with a group of women and children, she must fight to save both their loves as the rebel forces break down the last barriers. The fate of the Island Colonies hangs in the balance, and three lives draw even closer, as forces clash over who will rule the overseas jewel of the Toltec Empire.
Toltec Noon
Fergus continues to plot to gain more power in the devious world of London politics inside the capital of the English Province. Taking matters into his own bloodied hands, he lets nothing stand in the way of becoming the high priest. But there are others as ruthless as he.
General Mixcoatl must lead an army into Scotland before he can assume the rank of governor of the province. Once in that precarious position, old debts and old passions will return to plague him and those he loves as a new and deadly crisis rises from across the ocean.
Rowena’s lover has left her for the wars across the Channel and she fears he will not return, or if he does, it will be impossible for him to wed her and be a father to her unborn child. Hunted by assassins, she must leave those she loves and once more strike out on her own.
Religious politics in the Empire blaze hot, wars rage and blood is shed as these three struggle, sometimes at cross-purposes, for power and the ultimate good of the land.
We're Not in Kansas
Archeologist and single mother Macy and her teenage daughter Tiffany are off to a dangerous part of the world, on a foolhardy search for traces of the ancient Egyptian cat-goddess, Bastet. What they find is far more than they bargained for: a dangerous dictator, a mysterious police inspector, and a grizzled Indiana Jones look-alike.
You might say the trip takes them right out of this world. Will they get home alive or simply disappear into very thin air?
Set in the near future, We’re Not in Kansas is a marriage of a thriller and speculative fiction, with a soupcon of romance.
Alex in Wanderland
Thrust into an alternative world, a married couple finds themselves as saviors of the land, with subtle hints of a slow and painful death as their ultimate reward.
Alex and Alexis find themselves on a not-so-typical quest to fulfill a ridiculous ancient prophecy. Their traveling companions: the priest, the protector, and the thief, are suspect, and everyone else seems out to stop them from reaching their ultimate goal.
Knight's Bridge
A bloodied knight fleeing a lost cause rescues a woman escaping from the madness of a burning countryside and guides her and her daughters to temporary safety. An angry warlord is dispatched to seize a bridge but decides first to divert and ravage a small town. A young squire, following his master into his first battle has numerous fears and uncertainties to overcome. Each have a story to tell and they all meet together in the clash around the Pax Regis, the King’s Peace, a magnificent stone bridge over the Matriarch, the Mother of Waters.
A tale of brutal warfare, adventure and romance, with the destiny of a kingdom at stake, the lives of the four main characters hang in the balance, yet the widow, Eodithe of West Riverside, still hopes for a normal life, for herself and her two young daughters, if they can survive.