Novels

Templeton (Excerpt)
(A series of senseless murders in a rural California town prompts everyone to start pointing fingers and making accusations. Life as it used to be unravels and the hunt is on to stop the killings. Time passes with no clear suspect in sight and each murder complicates the simplicity of the town and its people. But there was one person in Templeton who knows the devastating truth.)
I don't recall the exact specifics and events that lead to the gruesome discovery of Lynn Smally's battered teenage body, but when a second body was discovered in the river a mere six weeks later, everything began to crystallize in my head. Lynn's murder was an incredible shock, a horrific nightmare for our quiet city and it seemed that in spite of the brutality, the complete ugliness and randomness of the crime, the wounds of the town and its decent, law-abiding people would soon heal.     But then they dragged Becky Dawson's lifeless body up from the muddy, putrid banks of the river and any thoughts of healing quickly unraveled. Everyone became unglued and the worst possible thoughts, hidden away in dark corners of the mind, became everyday memories. Things no one ever dared to mention in public now rested on the tips of tongues, eager to be made known.     Before the killings, neighbors had smiled at each other, waved friendly good mornings at 12th and Lake Streets, and pleasantries were exchanged at the Koffee Kup. But now judgmental eyes and thoughts pervaded the fiber of everyone's being and suspicion ran rampant. Friendships and alliances were strained, families and acquaintances grew apart. Trust was violated and no one was certain where they should turn or to whom they should speak. Families who had lived next door to each other for many generations, who had worked the land, gone through tough times and who had prayed next to each other in church, began to make silent accusations, all in an effort to uncover the truth.     The truth was that young girls were being murdered and no amount of finger pointing or blame would change that. Templeton was a small community, a five minute drive would take you out of town, out to pastoral areas, low rolling hills turning into rugged mountains. There were numerous places to dump the bodies of teenage girls, places where the underbrush grew thick and silent. It could have taken months to find a missing girl in these surroundings. But the bodies were always found in town, in places where we all used to socialize, places where we'd gather and discuss local politics, who was in the paper that morning and who was out too late with whom the night before. They were uncommon murders in common places and it was exactly that twisted perspective which gave the killings an even more disturbing edge.
The Donut King (Excerpt)
(Henry is a baker and he loves bread. His son Michael doesn't quite understand his father's strange obsession with all things dough. It's tough to see eye to eye when there's flour in them. A father and son struggle to accept each other while facing the amusing and sometimes painful details of life.)
My father was in love with bread. Not just bread mind you, but all types of bread products: bagels, pastries, muffins, doughnuts, pancakes, pretzels, corn bread, coffee cakes, baguettes, loaves, rolls, even bread pudding. I can't explain to you his love affair with dough, or exactly why bread sent him waxing philosophic, but it did. It was bread that got him excited and animated, bread that made him become wistful and thoughtful, and it was bread that he constantly used as a metaphor for most everything in life.     You'd almost think that bread alone was the reason the Jews fled Egypt, the Bolsheviks revolted against the Tsar and the industrial revolution changed the landscape of American agrarian life. Well...I suppose if you look at history perhaps there is a little truth in that. My dad would become wildly enthusiastic when speaking about bread. If someone would say to him, "Henry, it's just bread," his eyes would widen and pulsate and he'd yell out in a strong clear voice..."Manna!" His arms flailing about like flags in a hurricane.     True, if you read the Old Testament, God did provide manna for the weary Jews, but I don't think they left Egypt for a hearty bagel. But my father thought so. After all, what else would motivate massive numbers of people to wander the vast desert for forty years? Theologians believed it was a promise from on high. But according to my father, the promise wasn't a better way of life; it was a better way of making some dough.