I just finished a major revision of one of my novels and restarted my literary agent search, so I thought I’d take a moment to list and encapsulate the five “completed” novels I’ve finished over the years, never mind the first novel I wrote in college that shall never see the light of day, or the three half novels I started but have yet to finish. Hopefully one or all of these will find themselves on a bookshelf near you someday!
Title: Midnight Mountain
Genre: Noir / Mystery
Synopsis: Based on a real series of disappearances in Bennington, VT in the 1940s, private investigator Patrick Darrow and his deaf, tarot-reading partner Adam Edison arrive by train to search for Laura Wescott six months after she disappears from a hiking trail outside her college town. The case has gone cold and the town is tormented by rumors and myths about the mountain. The investigators partner with a local reporter and learn that Laura is not the first, or the last to go missing. While Darrow accrues evidence against a local ne’er-do-well, Edison falls deeper into the legends surrounding the mountain, particularly rumors of an abandoned mining camp deep within the heart of the forest. Darrow scoffs at the paranormal stories Edison believes, but with all other leads drying up, they agree to make the arduous trek to the hidden camp. What they discover there not only threatens their partnership, but points to the possibility of the supernatural playing a role as much as it does a new and unexpected murderer.
Title: Beacon
Genre: Literary / Ensemble
Synopsis: This story of the intersecting lives of five people is set in the artistic enclave of Beacon, NY, an hour north of NYC. The book is as much about the town as it is its inhabitants, with lighthearted vignettes of minor characters and historical events interspersed between the stories of Javier, a local bartender taking care of his ailing father; Catherine, an art dealer who escaped Manhattan yet secretly yearns to return for revenge; Riley, a self-doubting lawncare worker who always aspired to more; Greta, a German socialite hiding in Beacon as she tries to decide what direction her future may hold; and Manetto, a one-armed painter who hides a dark secret. When a mid-summer murder shocks the town, the intentions and plans of all five are thrown to the air. Some find new meaning, some escape their staid lives, and others realize they will forever be a part of Beacon, and Beacon a part of them. For good or ill. And all the while, the story of Beacon goes on.
Title: Henrietta vs The End of the World
Genre: Children’s / Middle Grade / Contemporary Fantasy
Synopsis: Henrietta Harrison lives with a loving-yet-overworked single mother, and all her classmates tease her because she firmly believes she’s a knight in shining armor. In her daydream world, Henrietta battles dragons, trolls, and wizards—which are truly just other kids, dogs, or harmless shrubbery—in a veiled attempt to escape a life of boredom, responsibility, and questions about why her mother lives alone. Henrietta soon meets an adventurous new girl in the neighborhood named Ginny, but becomes suspicious that Ginny's father is secretly a dragon bent on destroying the world, which, obviously, he isn’t. Determined to save her town, Henrietta uses all her pluck, creativity, and every last one of her mother's nerves to get the job done. But time is running out and nobody believes her, so she does what any hero would do—eat one last bowl of mac & cheese and bravely ride her bike into battle. In the final showdown with the sinister “dragon,” Henrietta learns that having just one loving parent in her life isn’t something she needs to fix, but rather is something to embrace.
Title: Game of Life
Genre: Survival / Apocalyptic / Horror
Synopsis: In the summer between finishing college and accepting her first real job, Claire decides to give herself one last challenge and volunteers to work in a remote fire tower for a season. Though an accident disables her radio, Claire follows protocol and waits for help while maintaining her post. After weeks pass with no word, Claire leaves the mountain to find a pandemic has swept through the world. All that remains are empty streets, abandoned vehicles, and homes that have become tombs for the dead. Forced to survive in a world with no power, people, or future, she uses every ounce of her will and intelligence to get by. She scours the countryside for necessities and knowledge to help her eke out an existence through increasingly disastrous seasons. But her greatest struggle is finding a reason to go on in a world where everyone she knows is dead and every future she prepared to face is gone. Until Claire discovers she isn’t alone after all. There are other survivors—deadly, craven, and hungry—and suddenly being alone in a dead world is the least of her nightmares.
Title: The Last Cold Night
Genre: Crime / Historical Mystery / Horror
Synopsis: A rash of unsolved murders forces the residents of Depression-era Troy, NY to hunker down and avoid the streets after nightfall. Roy Werner, a widower fighting to free his children from an orphanage, does the same until his neighbor disappears and a local priest begs Roy to help find him. Roy turns to a mongrel assortment of neighborhood allies—newspaper reporters, secretive doctors, petty crooks, and brutish junkyard roughnecks—to help him search through a city ravaged by crime, corruption, and rumors that Death himself stalks the alleys at night. But at every turn, Roy loses friends and loved one to madness, murder, and betrayal as he falls deeper into a tangled web spun by an occult-obsessed mobster chasing bizarre relics he believes will give him otherworldly powers to seize control of the city. As the only person left to face the growing darkness head on, Roy descends into in the most violent district of the city, the Blackhalls, where he discovers something far worse than macabre gangland murders—the awakening of an ancient evil and the impending destruction of Troy…perhaps even the world.