Taking time to reflect on life and those incidences that make up memories, teach lessons and instruct…they all can be thought of as short stories. I sort through various lessons, celebrate good moments, and remember that humor is far more engaging than preaching. This collection emerged from random thoughts, numerous quirks, and wistful memories. Sometimes, one finds truth in those.

This mob storybook navigates nostalgia, a blood fight on the dance floor, a future recast, and three characters as they come together to revive a fading star. It’s one of those fiction books that deals with loyalty and betrayal while navigating mob deals. Shontel, a beautiful black woman, realizes her star is fading in the entertainment world. Can a 35th high school reunion and former high school sweethearts reunite to a reimagined career, or will it end in a mobster’s trunk? Once a lover ...

Imagine a working group of 100 tenured faculty flanked by 200 academic staff and 150 support personnel carrying Civil Service protection. No one gets fired. Few move on. Most see the same faces and hear the same gossip all their lives. Memories last decades. Envies flourish. Careers are checked, sometimes destroyed. Frustrated ambitions transform into depression. Resentments run deep and are satisfied with viscous gossip…or violence. Promotions are denied. Fellowships are blocked. Salary i...

THE MARQUEE MURDERS In Woodland Park, lazy nights and weekly movie mysteries build a new audience. When film plots link themselves to homicides in the Rivoli parking lot, Lt. Chester Devlin is perplexed. Jonas Kirk is curious. They, along with local attorney, Roger Blaisdell, and newbie cop, Oliver Grant, search for connections. An athletic couple, the Gordons, grapple with their crumbling marriage while Kirk and his romantic partner, Sharon Cunningham, speculate on likely motives for a se...

As he works to introduce Pumpkin Fest to Woodland Park, Jonas Kirk stirs a nest of hidden enmities and memories of wretched misbehaviors. Four childhood friends, community leaders now, help organize the event . . . and then they begin to die—accidents it would appear. At the same time, Kirk finds himself increasingly lethargic, distracted from his commitments, and singularly focused on growing a pumpkin. “Really, Jonas? Gardening?” Sharon Cunningham asked. For a time, he had no answers for...

Life is lived in segments, sometimes seamlessly woven, sometimes abruptly altered. This collection of short story fiction reports on personal transitions, uncertain futures, and individual frailty. Stories of failed love, fitful maturation, fragmented relationships, human misbehavior and psychological growth provide new perspectives laced with humor, anger, resignation and pathos. They embrace sweet youth, challenging adolescence, painful young adulthood, satisfactory marriage, erratic par...

JONAS KIRK MYSTERIES: CLICKCan Jonas Kirk, a wealthy, white, middle class twentysomething orphan find a purpose in life? Thoughtful detective work appeals to him, especially when it solves homicides that seem to puzzle the local police in Woodland Park, Minnesota. In CLICK, Kirk reaches out to Sergeant Chester Devlin, sharing insight that solves a case, creating a working confidence that matches the distant, clean and tidy Kirk with the am...

Bingo is a simple game, a format for gossip, fun and occasional windfalls of cash. Yet in Woodland Park, it seems to trigger burglaries and murder. Key personalities focus on these frightening events, among them, Bishop Leland Burkey, and Lt. Chester Devlin, each especially frustrated at their inability to calm a nervous community absorbing Muslim and Sikh arrivals. Jonas Kirk returns from a self-imposed hiatus and finds himself working with a new and seductive personality, Sharon Cunningh...

Jonas Kirk emerged from the sudden death of his parents as a wealthy wanderer, traveling widely but settling into his home town, Woodland Park, MN. Immune to the movers and shakers of his community, he remained footloose until he became interested in murder. Studying forensic evidence at Hamline University, he courted the professional confidence of Lt. Chester Devlin and gradually became an informal advisor on homicide investigations. Trusted? Maybe not. A vacation in the Rockies introduce...

Two friends, in their search for financial freedom, start a "business." What they didn't know was that they didn't know anything about business. After placing an ad in the paper,the two hit the streets with a yellow banner and unshakeable optimism. This is a hilarious short story of a short-lived business, and the exploits of two men who will do anything for a buck. Sadly, this is a true story.

Parents, be careful if you read this story to your young children. This nightmare is not wished on anyone having fun trick or treating. But, nobody can predict the weather or decide what an animal might do when the weather turns really nasty. Never take anything for granted, but expect the worse and hope for the best.

A teenage boy falls hard for an enigmatic, troubled girl whose father is still reeling from her mother’s unexplained absence. They create their own safe little world, driving around in her Plymouth Duster—high, happy, but knowing it can’t last.The thirteen stories in Andrew Pyper’s intense and artful short-story collection, Kiss Me, deal with the issues, sensibilities and intangible estrangements of contemporary youth. But there are no neat and tidy coming-of-age passages ...