Mirage by Clive Cussler, Jack Du Brul

The extraordinary new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series from the grand master of adventure.

In October 1943, a U.S. destroyer sailed out of Philadelphia and supposedly vanished, the result of a Navy experiment with electromagnetic radiation. The story was considered a hoax — but now Juan Cabrillo and his Oregon colleagues aren’t so sure.

There is talk of a new weapon soon to be auctioned, something very dangerous to America’s interests, and the rumors link it to the great inventor Nikola Tesla, who was working with the Navy when he died in 1943. Was he responsible for the experiment? Are his notes in the hands of enemies? As Cabrillo races to find the truth, he discovers there is even more at stake than he could have imagined — but by the time he realizes it, he may already be too late.

REVIEW:

Clive Cussler, author of the bestselling National Underwater and Marine Agency and Dirk Pitt series, created his most intriguing high seas action hero: the enigmatic captain of the Oregon, Juan Cabrillo who was introduced with the first Oregon Files series Golden Buddha in 2003.

Juan Cabrillo is Chairman of the "Corporation", a special US Government-sponsored group that operates out of a ship called the Oregon; a marvel of scientific research equipment bristling with state-of-the-art weaponry - but disguised as a heap of junk.

Cabrillo and his crew of mercenaries with a conscience are able to cross the high seas in their 'rusting' tub unmolested, seeking out those beyond the arms of the law and dealing out justice to any who would plot chaos on a global scale.

Fans of the series who have waited for almost three year since the release of the last book in the series, The Jungle (2011), will heave a sigh of relief, and gobble up this latest addition to the Oregon Files series, Mirage, which is a continuation of the extraordinary adventures of Juan Cabrillo - Golden Buddah (2003) was followed by Sacred Stone (2004), Dark Watch (2005), Skeleton Coast (2006), Plague Ship (2008), Corsair (2009), The Silent Sea (2010), and The Jungle (2011).

In Mirage, Cussler with co-author Jack Du Brul bring to the reader Juan Cabrillo on a dangerous mission to save his old friend Yuri Borodin from a maximum Siberian prison. But the mission goes horribly wrong and in the process Yuri dies. But the mention of “Tesla” by Yuri before his death takes Cabrillo in a new direction trying to unravel why a dying man would utter “Tesla.”

“Tesla” mentioned by Yuri is Nikola Tesla, a mysterious and shadowy Serbian scientist whose immense knowledge and understanding of modern science and technology could prove disastrous if it is not use for good purposes. Tesla has invented alternating-current electricity and it is also widely believed that he has also developed a number of secret weapons, including a death ray, an earthquake machine, and an invisibility field.

Dubbed the second-most corrupt man on the planet, Russian fleet admiral Pytor Kenin is a man with sinister designs. To serve his nefarious purposes he has formed a private army and is using Tesla’s secret technology to that end. When there is talk of a new weapon soon to be auctioned Cabrillo embarked on the most dangerous mission of his life and discovered that the stakes are much higher than earlier thought to be. What is Pytor Kenin up to? Will Cabrillo manage to thwart him?

Mirage is exciting, engrossing and totally enjoyable, and fans of the Oregon Files series will find the latest addition a great reading escape.

My rating ➳ 👍👍👍👍

The Big Fear by Andrew Case

Practically ripped from recent headlines about police brutality and misconduct, Andrew Case’s debut novel THE BIG FEAR plugs directly into the live wire of current events, taking readers deep inside the world of the men and women who “police the police,” through a heart-pounding story of suspense, police corruption, profiteering and betrayal in the city that never sleeps.

Perhaps one of the most truly authentic NYC-set crime suspense novels ever written, THE BIG FEAR has an unmatched caliber of insider detail drawn from Case’s long and distinguished career as an investigator, spokesman, and policy director at the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board—the influential civilian committee that oversees NYPD misconduct claims. Case’s first hand knowledge of the goings-on in police stations, courtrooms, and lower Manhattan’s corridors of municipal power makes for a truly riveting reading experience.

At age fifty-three, Detective Ralph Mulino has certainly put in his time as a New York City policeman. He’s a good cop, but when he looks at how much the city has changed since he first walked the beat as a raw rookie, he feels increasingly out of place. New Yorkers aren’t fearing the “little” things like muggings, car thefts, and petty robberies the way they did—with very good reason—in the 1980s. To an outside observer, New York is safe now. But somehow the “big” fears are stronger than ever… Fears of buildings falling down. Fears of poison gas filling elevators and subway cars. Fears of bridges—full of cars, cyclists, and pedestrians—collapsing into the East River.

And policing has changed too. In Mulino’s day, it was about busting real criminals and getting them off the streets so the people in your precinct (whose names you knew) would be more secure. Now it’s all about meeting the statistical quotas handed down by some faceless bureaucrat—and as far as the statistics are concerned, a stop is a stop whether the guy is carrying a gun, a joint, or a bag of groceries.

But Mulino is still determined to do his job and do it well. It’s all he knows to do. So when a call rouses him out of bed at 2 A.M. one August night during a sweltering, tense summer, he doesn’t hesitate (even though it’s supposed to be his day off, which seems odd for a moment…). But what seemed to be a routine check of a docked cargo ship soon goes violently awry, and when the chaos settles Mulino sees one of his gunshots has killed another officer… who appeared to be an armed and threatening criminal.

A dead policeman is a big deal, and everyone from newspaper readers to City Hall big shots want answers... and perhaps a quick official conclusion that Mulino was a dirty cop who whacked an inconvenient colleague. It falls to Leonard Mitchell, the new head of the Department to Investigate Misconduct and Corruption (DIMAC) to figure it out. With all eyes on him, Mitchell knows his job likely depends on this case.

Sitting across the interview table from Mulino, Mitchell doesn’t see a careless shooter, and certainly not a cop killer. And there are just too many bizarre questions: Why was an off-duty Mulino called to the scene of the crime? What was the dead officer really doing there? What happened to the gun Mulino saw—was it really there and if so, who took it? And what was on the cargo ship and who did it belong to?

The surprisingly difficult search for answers quickly has Mitchell thinking that there is much more going on than a tabloid-friendly story of a disgruntled, corrupt detective. And when sabotage and more dead bodies start to surround the investigation, Mulino and Mitchell enter an uneasy partnership in a dangerous bid to save not only their careers and perhaps lives, but also the integrity of the city both are sworn to serve.

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Q&A WITH ANDREW CASE

 

Q: Was the plot of THE BIG FEAR informed by any specific cases you oversaw while serving at the Civilian Complaint Review Board?

A: While the overarching plot isn't based on any one case, many of the details and incidents of the book are informed by CCRB cases. The first draft of the original shooting was very much based on the case of Ousmane Zongo, who was shot by police officer Bryan Conroy after a chase in a dark storage unit in 2003. Eventually the storage unit became a container ship, and Zongo became another police officer. The case in Mulino's backstory, in which a man dies after being pepper sprayed, is based on a very similar case that I investigated in 1997. I also used to do outreach and press for the CCRB, and much of the interplay between Leonard and Tony Licata has its roots in my work with the tabloid reporters who covered the NYPD.

 

Q: You’ve written plays in the past but this is your first novel. How did you find the fiction-writing process to be different from writing a dramatic script in terms of character, plot, pacing, etc.?

A: Plays are all dialogue, and the audience watches from the outside. That means that everything about a character has to come through in how she speaks. The plot has to be played out in speech. Writing a book gives you so many more options--you can describe the world, you can go into someone's mind--but it also means you have many more choices to make. In a book, you can't write a weak line and hope the actor will save you. What was most new to me in writing the book was the chance to write from a point of view: seeing the world from inside the character is something that theatre doesn't easily allow. At the same time, I'm so glad I had the experience I had writing for theatre, because you are trained to write crisply, and to always write in a voice. Not only does being a playwright mean I focused on strong dialogue, it also means that even the narrative scenes are written in a voice. There is never a dull neutral narrator simply walking you through the action.

Q: Leonard Mitchell’s job seems to be similar to yours at the CCRB. Is the character of Leonard based on you to any extent? What about the characters of Ralph Mulino and Christine Davenport?

A: There are models for all the characters, but as I went through many drafts of the novel they all moved away from who they were based on and became themselves. Originally, Leonard was very much like me: he had my background, he had my family life, he had my job. But the more I worked on the book, the more he grew to serve the novel, rather than my image of myself. His ambition to be seen by the mayor's side after breaking a big case is something that some people at the agency had, but it wasn't my focus. I did outreach to tenants at the Ebbets Field apartments, but I never lived there. At the same time, some of my personal history started creeping into other characters: Christine Davenport's family life is more like mine than it is like the woman who ran the CCRB when I was there. And while there are a few cops whose character traits found their way into Mulino, he probably changed the most over the course of the revisions, and in many ways I have become more fond of him, and identify more with him, than anyone else.

Q: Many who read this book are likely also going to be very interested in the many real-life instances of police misconduct occurring today, and the ways those cases are handled. What, if anything, do you hope your readers learn about how this process really works from THE BIG FEAR?

A: Investigating police misconduct was the most challenging, most rewarding, and most exciting job I ever had—on most days more than writing novels. I'm really heartened that the issues I devoted much of my career to are talked about so much more than they were ten years ago.

When I spoke to the community council after Timothy Stansbury was shot, there was not nearly the interest that there is now in the many cases that have been in the news. But one thing that I think people who have started following the issue of police misconduct over the past two years may miss is that the people who have been in the field for a long time are working their hardest on very challenging cases. There seems to be a meme nowadays that the people who investigate the police are compromised or challenged or biased. I never saw that. Flo Finkle, who prosecuted the "dirty thirty" cops in Harlem and ran the CCRB when I worked there, is incredibly driven and devoted to justice. Phil Eure, who ran the DC oversigh agency and is now the NYPD's inspector general, Kelvyn Anderson, who runs the equivalent in Philadelphia, or Richard Rosenthal, who investigated the police in Denver and Portland, are tough people doing a tough job. The reason these investigations don't always turn out the way people want is that they are usually incredibly complicated, very dense, and filled with competing narratives. So I hope that people come away, in some part, with a respect for the hard work done by the people who investigated police conduct.

Q: The massive changes in New York City over the past thirty years are an important part of your novel. Do you think that, on the whole, the city is better or worse off now than it was when Ralph Mulino was starting to work the beat? Do you foresee the trends towards less crime and higher costs of living continuing?

A: In 1995, I worked at a theatre on 42nd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Every day I would walk past the porn theatres on my way in to work. That was also the year that Times Square underwent its sudden, wrenching, change. During the two months or so that the porn houses were shut down but before they had been rehabbed to house Disney productions, the marquees all sported poems. Weird, three-line odes and haikus. I saw Fiona Shaw perform The Waste Land, directed by Deborah Warner, in one of those theatres before renovation. It was the purest marriage of setting and content I have ever seen on stage.

So in many ways, I miss the old New York. I am just barely old enough to remember it. I feel bad for people who didn't have the chance to see it, to walk through a city that had truly wild places, rather than places that merely performed wildness. But I also recognize the importance of safety: I have two kids, and where I live in Brooklyn was not a great place to raise two kids in 1995. So I'm torn, because I love both New Yorks, in their way. I love the mess and the carnival that we used to have, and I love being able to get on a subway with my six-year old and not have to worry for a moment about her safety.

As for crime and the cost of living, I think that we have been sold a false narrative that the two are related. Safety doesn't have to be expensive. It's great that crime is down, but the fact that it costs so much to live in the city is crime of a different sort. The reasons that real estate costs have spiraled out of control are a story for another time.

Q: What are your plans for your next book? Will we see Ralph Mulino and/or Leonard Mitchell again or are you working on something completely different?

A: I am deep into a sequel, in which we will see both Mulino and Leonard again, and not only them. And it's funny you should bring it up just after talking about real estate, because the new book is an exploration of the dark side of development, with Leonard and Mulino teamed up to investigate what looks at first like a construction accident, but turns out to be so much more.

The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly

The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly is the twelfth book in the lethal private detective Charlie Parker series, and comes after a long wait of more than two years since the release of the last book, The Wrath of Angels. The Charlie Parker series has come a long way since the publication in 1999 of Every Dead Thing, the first book in the series. Both lyrical and terrifying, the series follows Charlie Parker, a former detective with the New York Police Department, now a private eye, as he is on the trail of a serial killer known as ‘The Collector’ who is responsible for the brutal murders of his wife and young daughter. Though it is a cold case, Parker is determined to track down the killer and bring him to justice.

In The Wolf in Winter, John Connolly who is an extremely gifted author crafted a compelling plot that revolves around the death of a homeless man who is keen to find his missing daughter. As Jude was found hanged, the local police termed it as suicide but a close friend is far from convinced. He tracked down Parker and persuaded him to investigate. The trail of the dead homeless man led Parker to the small, closed and secretive town of Prosperous in Maine where he stumbled upon secrets that the townsfolk have zealously guarded for long. Can Parker uncover the whole truth or pay the ultimate price for his misadventure?

Author John Connolly’s characterization and compelling plot aided by his masterful writing allows the reader to embark on an epic journey of suspense, mystery and crime with elements of the supernatural which borders on the edge of horror. It is a mishmash of fantasy and thriller, a real page-turner that will delight long-time fans of the series. Unlike many other long-running series, the Charlie Parker series is showing no sign of is meandering and continues to be as sharp as ever. Absolutely mesmerizing and suspenseful, The Wolf in Winter is destined to be a bestseller.

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The Burning Room by Michael Connelly

The maverick Los Angeles Police Department homicide Detective Harry Bosch has come a long way since he first made his appearance in the 1992 detective mystery thriller, The Black Echo. In that premier book of the series a man found in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam was just another statistic for the police department. But when Harry Bosch stepped in it became personal because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war.

Twenty-two years later in his nineteenth avatar in Edgar-winner Michael Connelly’s superbly crafted The Burning Room, Harry Bosch and his new partner, rookie Detective Lucia Soto, are tasked with an unenviable job of solving a very old case with a lot of twists and impediments. It concerns a case which begins almost ten years earlier with the drive-by shooting of Orlando Merced as he played with his band in Los Angeles's Mariachi Plaza. The bullet that struck him in the spine caused grievous damage leaving him paralyzed.

When Bosch and Lucy get to work they are confronted with lack of evidence which make the investigation all the more difficult. They got a vital lead when an anonymous tipster informed Detective Lucia Soto that the shooting of Orlando Merced is connected to the 1993 devastating fire which took place at the Bonnie Brae apartments that killed nine victims, mostly children. Incidentally, Soto could have been one of the children consumed by that raging fire twenty years ago but survived while some of his friends didn’t. The mariachi musician was a victim of a conspiracy to bury the truth behind the arson as he was believed to have known the people involved. Bosch and Lucy also unearthed connections between the two incidents with the robbery of an EZ Bank.

With powerful people coming into the picture, master storyteller Michael Connelly skillfully maneuvered this compelling police procedural with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Juggling between suspense, crime and mystery, there is no dull moment as Harry Bosch just simply refused to fade into oblivion and reinvented himself through the deft handling of his character by Connelly. Beautifully written and wonderfully paced, The Burning Room is not only for die-hard fans of the series but also for new readers who want to explore the world of Harry Bosch.

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The Escape by David Baldacci

Bestselling author David Baldacci returns with a thrilling new suspenseful, action-packed story full of mystery with military CID investigator John Puller. Just the third book in the John Puller series following Zero Day (John Puller Series) and The Forgotten (John Puller Series), The Escape is a book that will entertain and enthrall readers from cover to cover, with John Puller heading an eclectic cast of characters. The Escape follows the trail of a war hero and top US army investigator extraordinaire Puller and his partner US intelligence officer, Capt. Veronica Knox, as they are hot in pursuit of an escapee from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

But for Puller, the assignment is fraught with professional and personal dilemmas. The escaped convict is none other than his brother Robert Puller who is a major in the US Air Force. Robert has been convicted of treason and national security crimes. As John digs deep into the case, he realizes that there are many others pursuing his brother, and will resort to any means to either bring him to justice or silent him permanently. John races against time to find Robert and unearth the truth behind his brother's conviction where nothing is what it seems to be.

And finding a man who doesn't want to be found is a tough proposition. As Puller pieces together the jigsaw puzzle, Robert is also determined to clear his name and hacks into the national database. To throw off his pursuers, he has also changed his appearance, but for how long? Will John find his brother before the others? David Baldacci masterfully weaves an interesting an interesting story full of suspense and surprises. Puller's character has gone from strength to strength, and is likely to become one of the most fascinating fictional characters in recent years.

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Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

If you want an effortless but entertaining read, Fool Me Once by bestselling author Harlan Coben just might be the right choice. This stand-alone suspenseful and intensely compelling mystery thriller is one of the best from the author in recent years. A master storyteller par excellence, this novel reaffirms his status as a top-notch writer who has the gift to turn a simple-enough premise into a page-turning excitement, and an ordinary character into a memorable one. And he left the best for the last - may be, may not be the perfect ending, but this was one of the most unexpected endings I have read in a very long time.

Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben is the story of a discredited soldier who also suffered the ignominy of losing her sister and her husband within a short span of just four months. Her humiliation in the line of duty was painful, yet what followed was unthinkable. But Maya Burkett is no ordinary woman. Home after a whistle-blower website charged her of targeting a car of civilians while on a rescue mission, her sister Claire was murdered, and then her husband Joe Burkett was shot in front of her. But Maya is determined to stay strong for the sake of her two-year-old daughter, Lily. The twist in tale starts when a friend out of concern gifted Maya a digital picture frame that doubles as a hidden nanny-cam. When Maya decided to watch footage from the nanny-cam she was horrified to see her husband Joe playing with their daughter two weeks after his death.

In Fool Me Once, author Harlan Coben crafted a twisted tale where things are not what they seemed to be. Though a strong character, Maya is in an unenviable position. She has her hands full. She’s a single parent who can’t neglect her deceased sister’s children. She is still reeling under post-traumatic stress disorder, and, believe it or not, she’s a suspect in her husband murder case. Yet, she is able to take things in her stride, and when the odds do not add up, she decides to take things into her own hands and get to the bottom of it. I think Maya is an exceptional character, and there are several secondary characters who are well-defined. There is a sense of poetic justice as author Harlan Coben brings the story to its climax. You won’t want to miss this for any other book!

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The Last Girl (The Dominion Trilogy Book 1) by Joe Hart

A mysterious worldwide epidemic reduces the birthrate of female infants from 50 percent to less than 1 percent. Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women.

Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound dedicated to determining the cause. For two decades, she’s been isolated from her family, treated as a test subject, and locked away—told only that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world’s population.

Captivity is the only life Zoey has ever known, and escaping her heavily armed captors is no easy task, but she’s determined to leave before she is subjected to the next round of tests…a program that no other woman has ever returned from. Even if she’s successful, Zoey has no idea what she’ll encounter in the strange new world beyond the facility’s walls. Winning her freedom will take brutality she never imagined she possessed, as well as all her strength and cunning—but Zoey is ready for war.

REVIEW: How much is a life worth?

This question is the first that enters Zoey’s mind each morning, and it is the last she thinks before falling off to sleep every night. Can a price be put on such a thing? And if it could be, would one ever be able to pay for it?

Opening with the oft repeated quote attributed to Henry David Thoreau, “The savage in man is never quite eradicated,” this hard-boiled dystopian thriller set in the near future with a dynamic cast of characters headed by a female is quite fittingly dedicated by the author to his wife, mother, daughter and sister, whom he labelled “the strongest women I know.” Though I’m not that familiar with author Joe Hart, all I know is that he has an impeccable record as an author with seven novels to his credit, most of them bestsellers. He has also written a novella – Leave the Living, four short stories and a collection of short stories entitled Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror.

The first book in the planned Dominion Trilogy, The Last Girl by Joe Hart, reads like a doomsday prophecy with the world facing the scourge of drought of women. In less than a quarter of a century, the world’s women population has dwindled down to a thousand, and with no baby girls and women, there seems to be no hope, and the world is ravaged by uncertainty. The National Obstetric Alliance (NOA) was set up to determine the cause but it has failed to come up with a satisfying answer. Known as “The Dearth,” the world witnessed a noticeable drop in female births in 2016. It grew to an alarming rate in 2017.  By 2018, despite an unprecedented scientific undertaking by NOA, it recorded less than one in one hundred million. It resulted in chaos, uprisings and rebellions leading to a full-scale civil war which lasted for five years.

Under the guise of protecting and sheltering the surviving women, the NOA has been running a program, conducting experiments, at a facility known as Advance Research Compound. The surviving women are holed up - Terra, Zoey, Grace, Halie, Rita, Sherell, Penny, Lily, Meeka and many more expectantly waiting for their turn to be “inducted” as they believe that the program isn’t something to be afraid of but something to embrace as it is for the greater good. They believe that they live for the chance to rebuild the world, each waiting for their turn to be inducted into the program, after which fulfilling their long-cherished dream of living in the safe zone with parents. But Zoey knew better, and she decided to act before more of her friends are “inducted.” Author Joe Hart cooked up a chillingly terrifying scenario, leaving me breathless. Mesmerizing and unsettling, , The Last Girl by Joe Hart is a thrill-a-page read which fans of science fiction, mystery, suspense and futuristic novels will enjoy.

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Ghost Gifts by Laura Spinella

All Aubrey Ellis wants is a normal life, one that doesn’t include desperate pleas from the dead. Her remarkable gift may help others rest in peace, but it also made for an unsettling childhood and destroyed her marriage. Finally content as the real estate writer for a local newspaper, Aubrey keeps her extraordinary ability hidden—until she is unexpectedly assigned the story of a decades-old murder.

Rocked by the discovery of a young woman’s skeletal remains, the New England town of Surrey wants answers. Hard-nosed investigative reporter Levi St John is determined to get them. Aubrey has no choice but to get involved, even at the terrifying risk of stirring spirits connected to a dead woman’s demise and piquing her new reporting partner’s suspicions.

As Aubrey and Levi delve further into the mystery, secrets are revealed and passion ignites. It seems that Aubrey’s ghost gifts are poised to deliver everything but a normal life.

Review: Ghost Gifts by Laura Spinella is a romantic suspense thriller that will fascinate and entertain lovers of suspense, thriller and romance. No ordinary romance, and no ordinary suspense or thriller either, author Laura cast her magical spell as the reader is taken on an exciting superbly paced novel that is un-put-down-able. Entrancing, intense and riveting, Ghost Gifts by Laura Spinella is a gratifyingly satiating read that will leave many readers clamoring for more.

Masterfully crafted and skilfully-woven, with plot twists that will keep readers on the edge, this romantic suspense which furiously combines with the supernatural and the mysterious, took shape twenty years ago in Holyoke, Massachusetts when Aubrey Ellis was a thirteen-year-old girl. The story continues twenty years later in present-day Surrey, Massachusetts, with Aubrey working as the writer and editor of Surrey City Press home portrait feature. The uneventful and monotonous daily grind was broken one Friday when ghoulish skeletal remains had spilled out from behind Dustin Byrd’s basement wall. It was the skeletal remains of Missy Flannigan who vanished without a trace, and for which army veteran Frank Delacort was ultimately convicted of the crime sans body though he pleaded innocence.

With the case hogging media limelight, Surrey City Press entrusted the task of unravelling the whole mystery to Levi St John, a tough reporter with imposing skills but disturbingly dense in the area of personal communication. Aubrey Ellis, whose worked was confined to real estate, and with no experience of serious investigative journalism, was assigned to work alongside Levi, who was as much reluctant to work with her as she was with him. As the case considered solved with a conviction turned red hot almost twenty years later, Aubrey unknowingly was assigned her worst nightmare – a fast-pass, all-inclusive ticket to a murdered girl’s past – and her own ghost. Author Laura Spinella spins a thrilling yarn that will take you effortlessly through to the end.

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About the Author:

Laura Spinella is an East Coast author, originally from Long Island, New York. She pursued her undergraduate degree in journalism at the University of Georgia. The southern locale provided the

inspiration for her first novel, ​ Beautiful Disaster​ , which garnered multiple awards, including a Romance Writers of America RITA nomination. She’s also lived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and in North Carolina before relocating to Massachusetts. She and her family currently live in the Boston area, where she is always writing her next book. ​ Ghost Gifts​  is Laura’s third work of romantic fiction. She also writes sensual romance under the pen name L. J. Wilson. Visit her website