Journalist Mark Manning delves into the bizarre world of miniatures . . . and finds a king-sized case of murderFront-page news in the quiet town of Dumont, Wisconsin, where former Chicago reporter Mark Manning runs the town's Daily Register, involves the annual exhibition of the Midwest Miniatures Society and new zoning laws for an adult bookstore . But murder becomes the headline when "King of Miniatures" Carrol Cantrell, the nation's foremost exp...

A gay Chicago reporter returns to his Wisconsin hometown—and a morass of lust, lies, and lethal family secrets in this "neatly twisted" mystery ( Booklist).An unexpected windfall has given burned-out Chicago journalist Mark Manning the chance to reconnect with his boyhood roots. With the blessing of his lover, Neil, he leaves the Windy City to return to Dumont, Wisconsin, to take over the town paper. His long-awaited family reunion is cut short when his co...

A masterpiece of mystery and suspense, this is the moving story of a man struggling to come to terms with his sexualityInvestigative journalist Mark Manning is on the trail of a story that could make his career. Airline heiress Helena Carter, who vanished seven years ago, is about to be declared legally dead. Her fortune, valued at over one hundred million dollars, will go to the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and the Federated Cat Clubs of America.Manning ...

Reporter Mark Manning searches for a killer and stumbles upon a stunning conspiracyChicago Journal reporter Mark Manning has been called in to replace a colleague on a big story. Famed Swiss astrophysicist Pavo Zarnik has just stunned the science world with his announcement that he's discovered a tenth planet in our solar system. Manning is skeptical of Zarnik's claims and believes he's a fraud. His suspicions grow when his fellow reporter—award-winning jo...

Journalist Mark Manning's Midwestern hometown closes ranks against him when his nephew is suspected of murderFor Mark Manning, running the local paper in his Wisconsin hometown is a refreshing change from his life as a hard-charging reporter for the Chicago Journal. Together with his partner, architect Neil Waite, he's settling into scenic, sleepy Dumont, whose inhabitants have welcomed them into their fold.Until Manning's nephew becomes th...

During his distinguished career as a journalist, Mark Manning has seen it all--riots, murder, political corruption, and every manifestation of the dark heart of the human species. But even his proven emotional resources will be stretched when the home he shares with his lover, architect Neil Waite, and his ward and nephew, Thad Quatrain, becomes the site of one of the most daunting, taxing, and potentially dangerous of all human rituals--a wedding.Roxanne Exner, best friend to both ...

Journalist Mark Manning has been successfully running his family's newspaper, The Dumont Daily Register, for several years now, and he sits on the board of two local companies, Quatro Press and Ashton Mills. So when the respective CEOs of these companies discuss a merger, it is only natural that Manning be interested in the proceedings. What's more, Manning's lover Neil, an architect, is designing a new house for Ashton's CEO, Gillian Reece.Reece is a business friend of Man...

After a long and successful career as a theatre director in Manhattan, fifty-something Claire Gray succumbed to a tempting offer to establish the theatre department at the new and very well funded Desert Arts College in Palm Springs. It has proven to be an exciting opportunity for Claire but now she's facing the end of her first academic year with a measure of melancholy. Not only is the spring production about to end but her student and clandestine lover, Tanner Griffin, is about to leave...

The first year in academia ends with a bang-up summer session for theater-director-turned-professor Claire Gray with a new production, a new love, and a dead body.Claire, a former Broadway director and now head of the Theater Department of Desert Arts College in Palm Springs, is running her summer workshop for the first time. The play she will direct is a staged version of the film Rebecca, and playing the female lead is Paige Yeats, daughter of the college's founder and pr...

After 30 some odd years of success as a director on Broadway, Claire Gray has accepted her first academic position - that of a theatrical director at the richly funded Desert Arts College in Palm Springs. Having lived a largely peaceful life in Manhattan, she is stunned to find herself in the midst of the second murder - and murder investigation - in a matter of months in Palm Springs. This time it's a local aged and ailing collector - who frequently lends pieces to local charity events or...

Dante O'Donnell is white, gay, and getting older every day. He has wasted his better years on starstruck dreams and the wrong men, so now he's working as a concierge for a vacation-rental outfit in Palm Springs, where the guests have far more baggage than what's packed in their suitcases. But when he finds a dead body floating in the swimming pool at one of his rentals, his own troubled past comes back to haunt him. So he turns for help to Jazz Friendly, a Black woman who, when she was a P...

Despite handicaps of low mental ability, deprived backgrounds or psychiatric and physical disability, most married couples with disabilities manage to give and receive much personal satisfaction and pleasure in their marriages. This is of special interest to professionals and social workers, who in the course of their jobs are called upon to give support and service to people with mental disabilities.Originally published in 1979 Ann and Michael Craft had spent four years researchin...