This is an audiobook of short stories of everyday human emotional experiences. Stories of profound loss, of great friendships, of growing old with a dog, of going to war, and of course, stories of deep romantic love. I hope the stories encourage the listener to do some introspection on what it means to be human. I believe the poems, like all art, will mean more to some than to others.

In the gentle coastal town of South Cove, California, all Jill Gardner wants is to keep her store - Coffee, Books, and More - open and running. So why is she caught up in the business of murder? When Jill's elderly friend Miss Emily calls in a fit of pique, she already knows that the city council is trying to force Emily to sell her dilapidated old house. But Emily's gumption goes for naught when she dies unexpectedly and leaves the house to Jill, along with all of her problems...and her enemies.

A brutal crime. The ultimate cover-up. How do you solve a murder with no useable evidence? Private detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighboring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible.

A 39-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Edward Stanton lives alone on a rigid schedule in the Montana town where he grew up. His carefully constructed routine includes tracking his most common waking time (7:38 a.m.), refusing to start his therapy sessions even a minute before the appointed hour (10:00 a.m.), and watching one episode of the 1960s cop show Dragnet each night (10:00 p.m.). But when a single mother and her nine-year-old son move in across the street, Edward’s timetable comes undone....

All former truck-stop waitress/new heiress Lizbet really wanted was a swimming pool. What she got was a skeleton, suspicious cops...and Charlie. While digging the hole for the pool, workmen discover a human skeleton. Suddenly Lizbet's backyard becomes the focus of the cops, the FBI, and the media. And if that isn't enough, 30 minutes later, Charlie, the skeleton's owner, shows up in ghost form dressed as a sexy, young hippie type, and asks Lizbet to help him find out who murdered him back in 1969.

Katherine Hamilton's goal in high school was to escape from her dead-end hometown of Asheboro, Maryland. Fifteen years later she's got a degree in hospitality management and a great job at a high-end boutique hotel in Baltimore. Until, that is, the hotel is acquired by a chain, and she's laid off. When Kate's high school best friend calls with a mysterious invitation to come talk with the town leaders of Asheboro, she agrees to make the trip, curious about where this new opportunity might lead.

Retired homicide detective Linda Sikorsky and her wife Kirsten McClellan head to Maine from their home in the New Jersey woods for a weekend of rest, relaxation and rewrites as Kirsten finishes drafting her first novel. Bad weather alters their plans, forcing them to stop for the night at the Cliff's Edge, a roadside motel known for secrecy and indiscretion. Something murderous goes bump in the night, sending the women on a search for justice when a young reporter's body is found violated and dumped on a back road.

"I come from a long line of idiots." Those were the last words his father uttered before dying, and from what he knew of his family tree and the unfortunate end that came to so many of his ancestors, Del Honeycutt couldn't disagree. What he didn't know was that his family held dark secrets - secrets that were about to come crashing down upon him. A seemingly innocent date gone tragically wrong plunges Del into a web of murder, lies, greed, and a hidden fortune.

Christine Bennett has left the cloistered world of nuns for the profane world of New York State, where murder and madness are often linked. At a town meeting, Christine volunteers to investigate a 40-year-old murder case long since closed. Now she'll move heaven and earth to exonerate a pair of retarded savant twins, now senior citizens, of their mother's murder on Good Friday in 1950.

The story is not your typical murder mystery. The sleuth is not a detective, private eye, or lawyer. He's an ordinary guy with an extraordinary dog. Jacob Martin is trying to make the best of a divorce and mid-life crisis when he gets a call at two o'clock Sunday morning from his mother. His sister has been arrested for the murder of her fourth husband, and his father is near death. Thus begins an adventure that takes Jake and his golden retriever from their Colorado retreat to a backwater town in the Missouri Ozarks.

In this gripping adventure - the first V.I. Warshawski mystery - America’s top private eye is tossed into a dangerous adventure when a seemingly straightforward assignment becomes complicated and deadly. Hired by a man who calls himself John Thayer, V.I.’s assignment is to find Thayer’s son Peter’s missing girlfriend. But when V.I. finds young Peter’s dead body instead, her client disappears.

When Phil Kramer is shot dead on a deserted suburban street in the middle of the night, his wife, Emily, is left with an emptied bank account and a lot of questions. How could Phil leave her penniless? What was he going to do with the money? And, most of all, who was he if he wasn't the man she thought she married?

Jerry Hobart has some questions of his own. It's none of his business why he was hired to kill Phil Kramer. But now that he's been ordered to take out Kramer's widow, he figures there's a bigger secret at work - and maybe a bigger payoff.

Abigail Sutton's beloved husband walks out one night, doesn't return, and two years later is found dead, a victim of a long ago crime. It's made her sympathetic to the missing and their families. Starting her new life, Abigail moves to small town and buys a fixer-upper house left empty when old Edna Summers died. Once it was also home to Edna's younger sister, Emily, and her two children, Jenny and Christopher, who, people believe, drove away one night, thirty years ago, and just never came back.

The quiet of Longboat Key, Florida, is shattered when an old man is shot to death and his murderer is killed while fleeing the police. Strange documents in German and Arabic are found in the killer's car then an old friend of the murdered man disappears. As the mystery deepens, a ragtag group of devious and dangerous characters intrudes on the lives of the islanders, creating a kind of havoc unusual for a sun-splashed island full of retirees and beach bums.

Film actress Jamie Riedel was barely a teenager when, while on a camping trip, she witnessed the brutal murder of her father. Fourteen years later, Jamie returns to Jackson Ridge to settle up the estate of her estranged mother. Soon after her arrival, a note appears on her door: "I saw you in the woods today." Now Jamie is questioning if the right man was sent to prison for her father's murder.

Christine Bennett has left the cloistered world of nuns for the profane world of New York State, where murder and madness are often linked. At a town meeting, Christine volunteers to investigate a 40-year-old murder case long since closed. Now she'll move heaven and earth to exonerate a pair of retarded savant twins, now senior citizens, of their mother's murder on Good Friday in 1950.

Successful TV journalist Alison Reynolds' career comes to an abrupt end when top executives decide they need a "younger face". As if that's not enough, Ali discovers her media mogul husband is cheating on her: and her best friend from high school is missing.

All former truck-stop waitress/new heiress Lizbet really wanted was a swimming pool. What she got was a skeleton, suspicious cops...and Charlie. While digging the hole for the pool, workmen discover a human skeleton. Suddenly Lizbet's backyard becomes the focus of the cops, the FBI, and the media. And if that isn't enough, 30 minutes later, Charlie, the skeleton's owner, shows up in ghost form dressed as a sexy, young hippie type, and asks Lizbet to help him find out who murdered him back in 1969.

Melanie Turner has made quite a name for herself remodeling historic houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. But now her reputation may be on the line. At her newest project, a run-down Pacific Heights mansion, Mel is visited by the ghost of a colleague who recently met a bad end with power tools. Mel hopes that by nailing the killer, she can rid herself of the ghostly presence of the murdered man - and not end up a construction casualty herself....

Ex-cop Frank Harper doesn't want to get involved. Harper is visiting the small Ohio town of Cooper's Mill, trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter and a grandson he's never met. But he finds the town gripped in fear - two young girls have gone missing, taken in broad daylight from a busy street. And the police are coming up blank. But once Harper is drawn reluctantly into the investigation, he'll stop at nothing to find the girls. And he doesn't care who gets in the way.

Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.

In the gentle coastal town of South Cove, California, all Jill Gardner wants is to keep her store - Coffee, Books, and More - open and running. So why is she caught up in the business of murder? When Jill's elderly friend Miss Emily calls in a fit of pique, she already knows that the city council is trying to force Emily to sell her dilapidated old house. But Emily's gumption goes for naught when she dies unexpectedly and leaves the house to Jill, along with all of her problems...and her enemies.

Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office. Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why. So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will change everything he’s ever known.

Promoting her latest books brings best-selling mystery writer Jessica Fletcher to New York for Christmas. Her schedule includes book signings, chat-show appearances, department store shopping...and murder. But it all begins with a sidewalk Santa staring at Jessica with fear and recognition.

Twenty-six years ago, just before a series of brutal murders rocked the idyllic town of Bowers Inlet, Cassie Burke lost her family and nearly her own life to a transient befriended by her father. Back then, Cassie was a scared kid; now, she's a homicide cop. Back then, the suspect was caught and convicted; he died in prison. But now the killing has started again. And all signs indicate that the Bayside Strangler has come back for more.

News that the body of a recently murdered prostitute—stabbed repeatedly and dumped on Georgia's Shelter Island—has been identified as Shannon Randall stuns the FBI, particularly special agent Dorsey Collins. Twenty-four years ago, nineteen-year-old Eric Louis Beale was convicted and later executed for Shannon's murder—and the agent in charge of the case was Dorsey's father. Now Dorsey is determined to find out where her father's investigation went wrong, what part he played in the death of an innocent man, and where Shannon has been all this time.

Marshall Karp is an acclaimed playwright known for his witty sense of humor and crackling dialogue. His debut novel The Rabbit Factory stars the irreverent LAPD detective duo of Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. Dean Lamaar is the architect of an entertainment empire and the creator of iconic characters like Rambunctious Rabbit and McGreedy the Moose.

First there were roses and the notes in her mailbox signed simply, "Admirer". Then the accident. One minute Chris Callaway was one of Hollywood's brightest rising stars, starting a new picture that could send her career skyrocketing; the next she was falling from the unfinished deck of her beautiful new Malibu beach house...waking up blind, uncertain whether she would ever see again.

It’s the new normal at the Garber household in Connecticut: Glen, a contractor, has seen his business shaken by the housing crisis, and now his wife, Sheila, is taking a business course at night to increase her chances of landing a good-paying job. But she should have been home by now. Waiting for Sheila’s return, with their eight-year-old daughter sleeping soundly, Glen soon finds his worst fears confirmed: Sheila and two others have been killed in a car accident. Adding to the tragedy, the police claim Sheila was responsible. Glen knows it’s impossible.

Illustrator Lucy Brighton loves her work. Her animal characters Izzy, Bizzy, and Lizzy have their own comic strip, card line, and children’s cartoon, and their popularity has given Lucy financial stability and freedom. Yet none of that quite erases the lingering ache of a cold, lonely childhood. Then Lucy receives a call to say that her mother and father have been killed in a car crash. While settling their affairs in Florida, Lucy begins to realize how little she really knew about their lives.