Linsee Kang, a part-time researcher for Perennial 23, a start-up in South San Francisco, discovers that the company is hiding the true nature of its work. She contacts the media but is ridiculed. Shortly after, she is fired, shoved into a limo in front of the building by several advanced male humanoids, and awakens in the hold of a cargo jet.She is transported to a remote facility in the Chihuahuan Desert in Northern Mexico, where the Superintendent has been bribed to keep her unde...

June 2077. El Paso PI Elvyra Prezly has been hired to find a statuette, stolen from her client, Hermione Jalisco. "The Golden Monkey" is the only tangible link that Hermione has to her son, Javier, found drowned in a lake within El Paso's Ascarate Park two years ago.Elvyra and her fiancé/colleague, Charles "Chuck" Paladino arrive at Hermione's home, located in a senior community of manufactured homes, to interview her. The door is slightly open. She and Chuck step inside and are both hit w...

Investigators Kiera Hunt and Aldis Morgenna have made their home in Las Vegas. The year is 2204; their four-year old daughter, Sofie, classified as a genius at age two with an IQ of 165, is busy making AI robotic pets for friends and family in a small workshop next to her parents' home office. Barney the Beagle is her first creation and gift to Aldis. Others soon follow.Aldis and Kiera are awakened early one morning with the news that their close friend, retired LVPD detective, Fra...

The Eternal Cycle is a collection of fourteen speculative short stories--science ficton and fantasy, and satire and light horror--and a selection of poems, gleaned from twenty years of publishing in the small press.

Eden Capiella, a young painter of abstract art, is being stalked by a homeless man; he tells her that her younger brother Lennie, a heroin addict, is dead then two weeks later accosts her again to tell her he is alive and if she pays him, he will tell her where Lennie is.She contacts Elvyra Prezly and Charles "Chuck" Paladino, the private investigators she met at the Organ Mountains Dripping Springs Trail. The Prezly-Paladinos had been behind her on the trail with their five-month ...

They met in the First Class Lounge at LaGuardia airport. Three days later he flew to Chicago to show her the sights; that night they became lovers. They had nothing in common: Aldis Morgenna, a bodyguard, had recently retired on a small pension; Kiera Hunt, an heiress, was a well-respected Swiss private investigator, and yet she trusted him to keep her innermost secret, as they felt destined for each other.He accompanied her to Luzern, Switzerland, where Kiera's former legal guardi...

Twenty-year-old Marilynne Krasni never thought she was special. She had lived in poverty all of her life and left La Grande, Oregon at her mother's urging to seek her "future and fortune." When she arrived in Portland to look for work as a printer, there were no job openings and she ended up as a cashier in a diner in downtown Portland.She met ninety-year-old retired attorney and widower, Cecil Claybourne, in a nearby park while taking a lunch break. When they shoo...

Veronica Eberly woke up in a hospital bed in Santa Barbara with broken bones and a bad concussion. The nurse said she had been hit in a crosswalk by a drunk driver and had undergone surgery to reduce the pressure on her brain. Veronica remembered nothing of the ordeal—or her past.A few days later, the hospital's young social worker, Kevin Lawrence, interviews her and uses her driver's license to find out where she came from so he can search for emergency contacts.

PIs ELVYRA PREZLY AND CHUCK PALADINO HAVE BEEN HIRED TO HELP RECOVER THE SARPECH OF THE MAHARAJA OF PATALIA, A $3 MILLION PIECE OF JEWELRY MISSING FROM THE SAFE OF A LAS CRUCES COUPLE.The sarpech, bought decades ago through an estate sale, is presumed stolen. The insurer, Silverton Insurance Company of New York, sends their investigator Uma Deet, an expert on Indian jewelry, to meet with Chuck and Elvyra.They interview Padma Chauhan, the spouse of Samara Jadeja, an interior...

When Edie Whidley doesn't show up for her mother's funeral in Stillwater Oklahoma on August 30, 2018, or her first teaching position in Salina, Kansas, her father, Stanley Jerome "Stick" Whidley uses his instincts and knowledge as a former police investigator to find her. By accessing the GPS in her cell phone, he discovers her last location was Hutchinson, Kansas.Before traveling there, Stick looks for clues at the family home where Edie lived with her mother, Lea...

Julietta Fellini wasn't looking for love when she sold her home in San Luis Obispo and embarked on a journey of rediscovery. A recent widow after fifty years in a difficult marriage, she begins her odyssey across the country in a motor home that will take her from the central-coast of California to places across the United States she has never seen before. With her is Gretta, a 14-year old, long-haired Miniature Dachshund. Paris, France is Julietta's final destination. She plans to...

On June 1, 2206, Kiera gave birth to Aldis Jake, the Hunt-Morgennas' second child. A young nurse sees him in the nursery and tells a colleague that she wants to steal him. Morgetta tells Layla Orgode to back off—the baby's parents are Aldis Morgenna and Kiera Hunt, well-known private investigators. But when the Regional Governor's premature infant is taken from a private birthing center where Layla used to work, Morgetta contacts Kiera and suggests her friend is behind the kidnapping. Usin...