Books

The Patent Clerk’s Violin

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A luthier in Bern, Switzerland is asked to repair a Patent Office clerk’s violin which has inexplicably lost its tone. This chance meeting in 1904 begins the friendship of two very different people – the one immersed in his physical craft on a daily basis, and the other obsessed with key problems facing the world of physics at the dawn of the 20th century.

 

The book is set in the months leading up to Albert Einstein’s “Miracle Year” when he published four ground-breaking scientific articles. During this period, Albert is busy with his day-to-day workload at the Patent Office and is a new parent; however, his mental experiments in physics are always at the forefront of his thoughts. The luthier, Carl, is struggling with a heavy workload, a long-distance marriage, and increasing dissatisfaction with his routine job. The two are also friends with the musician and budding artist, Paul Klee. Somehow, Carl and Albert manage time for music and play together in a local quintet. Carl also becomes involved in the mystery of a valuable violin bow that strangely appears in the hands of a local student and discovers its connection to Albert’s violin.

 

 

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The Language of Equals

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Just as rice is unable to grow in the British Isles, Srinivasa Ramanujan struggled to survive in Cambridge; the mathematical genius may have eventually gained the recognition he desired but, removed from his Hindu religion, tradition, and culture, he suffered in his personal life.

 

A devout Brahmin from rural Tamil Nadu, India, Ramanujan traveled to the cold, industrial, Christian modernity of England a few months prior to the outbreak of World War I.  Once in Cambridge, Ramanujan was befriended by his sponsor and mentor G.H. Hardy who was Ramanujan’s opposite: Hardy, a classically trained and celebrated mathematician, and Ramanujan, a self-taught savant inspired by his goddess Namagiri Amman. In England, Ramanujan faced estrangement from his family and culture, deteriorating health, struggles for recognition by his peers, and periods of physical isolation due to illness. But he also had friends including the North family who provide a fictional window into daily life in turn-of-the-century Britain.

 

A historical fiction, The Language of Equals, is told from Srinivasa Ramanujan’s perspective and portrays his religious devotion, his passion for mathematics, and the every-day culture of his homeland as recollected during his encounters with British society in Cambridge, England under the dark cloud of WWI.

 

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Prospero’s Staff

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Whatever became of Prospero’s enchanted staff after he snapped it in two and buried it ‘certain fathoms in the earth’ in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest?

 

It was only a prop in a play, after all, so why was the staff now appearing to Martin Ropers? Martin had returned to a Greek island, trying to rekindle the spark that led to his highly successful first novel written in the ‘70s, but shortly into his trip he’d discovered the ancient staff and immediately lapsed into a coma. He would soon awaken to the persistent image in only one eye of a desolate island–where he grasps the staff.

 

Back home in Montana, Martin's situation takes a Shakespearean turn when he’s stranded in his house with neighbors seeking shelter from a mysterious wildfire that has erupted on the ridge just above them. His troubles deepen when he must contend with a painful, life-threatening condition within his brain and, to make matters worse, his literary agent and close friend has announced that she’s cutting her ties with him. Martin needs just one more successful book to turn his life around, but his damaged brain–and the staff–seem to have other plans.

 

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The Opinion Page

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It never rains, but it pours in Portland, Oregon. At least that’s how it seems to Detective Galen Young. The police are already busy with several high-profile crimes, including the abduction of a four-year-old girl from a local shopping mall, when another person goes missing.

 

 

Robert Armlin, the Opinion Page editor for the Oregon Sentinel was last seen exercising at his local fitness club on Saturday afternoon, and his frantic wife alerts the police about his failure to return home that evening. Detective Young quickly exhausts any possible leads into the editor’s disappearance, so he delves into Mr. Armlin’s prior newspaper columns to gain insights into his personality and to discover any enemies Armlin may have made through his opinion pieces. There are many who disagree with the editor’s viewpoint, and they are not shy about letting him know it. In the midst of the investigation, Detective Young’s family is struck by a personal tragedy that leaves the detective struggling to balance the demands of work and home.

 

 

 

Little progress is being made in the cases of the missing editor and the kidnapped girl when an unexpected connection between the two is revealed that leaves Galen and his colleagues scrambling for answers.

 

 

 

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The Obituary Page

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A stagnant case suddenly comes back to life when Robert Armlin’s cell phone shows up on the body of a Portland vagrant. Armlin, the missing Oregon Sentinel opinion page editor who was presumed to have met a bad end, becomes once again one of detective Galen Young’s primary assignments. The appearance of a ransom note only serves to increase the Portland Police Bureau’s suspicions that Armlin may still be alive but in danger.

 

 

At the same time, Galen becomes enmeshed in complications arising from a routine missing persons case. Erin Roberts was reported missing but returned home to her husband after a brief but failed affair. The news a short time later of her death from a rainy night hit-and-run comes as an unexpected shock to the detective.  Nothing strikes him as suspicious about her death, however, until Galen happens to read her obituary.  A single out-of-place sentence leads the detective on a search for Erin’s suspected killer – along a twisted and increasingly perilous trail.

 

 

His approaching mandatory retirement age from the Bureau, his own health, and caring for his incarcerated daughter’s sons are difficult enough, but Portland’s street demonstrations over George Floyd’s death, the global pandemic, and the detective’s unravelling home life only serve to further exacerbate problems for detective Galen Young.

 

 

Be advised: The Obituary Page is a standalone sequel to The Opinion Page but contains spoilers to that earlier mystery.

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We Write on Water

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No one had bought his books – his words were all swept away into the sea of self-published obscurity.

Ron couldn’t count the number of rejection letters he’d received in seeking a publisher. For his own sanity, he’d come up with a therapist-sanctioned ritual for their destruction. However, his main problem was the management of his growing anger and frustration at being ignored, evidenced by the fact that his poetry blog had devolved into rants against the publishing industry – and that he’d decided that he was going to quit his writing ‘career’ at year’s end.

The stress of the upcoming holidays, the dreaded trip to visit Sara’s parents, and the backlog of orders at his day job only worsened his attitude.  Ron had walked out onto Madison’s icy Lake Mendota on a freezing winter night to blow off steam and conduct his ritual of rejection, only to slip and crack his head.

He was shocked to awaken in Welford, England on a mild spring morning – an Elizabethan-era England.  Had he hit the ice that hard – was he in a coma? Dead? Try as he might, he seemed to be unable to return home to Madison. Encountering a prominent literary figure of the time made Ron yearn to either learn more from this person or to break free of the persistent hallucination. Unable to escape, he thought his fate would be to end his days passively observing a dull rural life from another time.

Suddenly he was back in 21st century Madison. His time for reflection in the quiet town - and the writings left by a mysterious visitor who had been living in his house while he was away in England - ended up forever changing his attitude toward his life and his writing craft.

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In a State of Opposition

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People are uncomfortable around Jason –  it’s as if his body is wired in a polarity opposite to everyone else’s.  He has struggled his whole life to find acceptance and has found few who can tolerate him.  Yet he and his autistic son have found a sense of community in Dunkirk, Idaho, and his instrument repair business has done well.

 

However, Dunkirk is under siege.  The Holy Grace Church has declared that it is going to take over the town and is buying up local real estate at an increasing pace, evicting non-church businesses as it grows – and Jason’s shop is the most recent casualty. Now the church has its eyes set on acquiring the town’s main attraction.

 

Jason is also an author, and recent legislation banning “objectionable materials”  from libraries and restricting minor access to library collections has his Panhandle Authors’ Group up in arms.  After several unsuccessful attempts at protest, many in the group have decided that the best way to draw attention to the issue is to write books that might be banned.  This decision begins to fracture the group – an important network of friends for Jason.

 

With private militias now legal in Idaho, a sudden violent event has him wondering if remaining in Dunkirk is worth it, even if leaving means losing the small circle of friends he has developed. Is it time to move to a safer town or to stay and struggle against the forces affecting Dunkirk and the life he has built?

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