Central Kansas Library System

In this collection of five intense short stories, a writer and his friend travel to Pamplona for the running of the bulls, the friend's attempt to truly live just one more time; Training can take many forms, from a good old-fashioned thumping to much worse treatment (that will leave you smiling); A young couple arrive in a bus terminal. Both are nervous at their impending separation. We assume it's a sad time for both, but is it? Are they running...

How important is finishing what you start? Important enough to risk your life?

From the opening: Of the three wingback chairs in my library, only one is upholstered in human skin. There's a reason for that. Charles Claymore Task has been labeled a psychopath by hypocrites who see themselves as "normal." And a group of wealthy investors want to know what makes him tick. They ask him to detail for a film crew what makes people like him tick. At least that's the initial plan. On film, Charlie describes the abandonment, disillusionment,...

In these five short stories you attend a new kind of ink blot test, meet a man in an airport who will render you normal, lie mute and unmoving as a spider transports you to the next world, live and run with the wolves, and strive, strive to meet a goal as a writer and fail, badly.

This is a novel, but only in the most basic sense. Actually it's a novel wrapped around eleven separate short stories. Or maybe it's a short story collection enclosed in a novel. The novel itself consists of a prologue and several intermissions, one after all the short stories except the last one. The stories run the gamut of genres: horror, action-adventure, psychological suspense, humor, western and others. The novel is about two writers on a...

This is a love story set in Mexico in the late 1800s. Being a lawman, takes a toll that former Texas Ranger Wes Crowley knows all too well. He's settled with the notion that he will live and die alone to avoid bringing harm to those he might have loved. But, Coralín Martinez de Silva is a force of nature, and she has ideas of her own. This story is excerpted from the forthcoming novel, The Marshal of Agua Perlado, book seven in the Wes Crowley series....

A meek, mild accountant from Cleveland finally, finally gets a break when he lands a big client for his firm. But he gets an even bigger one when he gets to Louisiana.

An American expatriate takes a chance wandering the streets of a foreign town. He's looking for a contact for a local Resistance group who needs help. These are men who go to the war most days and stay home with their families on other days. These are men who are called on when other men simply will not do.

Some things are much larger and more important than the individual. A rural New Mexico boy joins the Marine Corps. These thirty vignettes, each a slice of life, a snapshot, are stories, recollections, histories and confessions. They are truth and fiction, reality and fantasy. I'll let you choose which is which.

Sometime before the story begins, Pancho and Lefty travel south to involve themselves in the Mexican war. Pancho is a natural warrior. Under duress from the Federales, Lefty does what he has to do. But maybe there's a way to redeem himself.