Sievert Olafson wants to give up a sure thing: farming the rich soil of Minnesota to go to college. His father forbids it, his brothers ridicule him, and his sweetheart refuses to join him. So what does a seventeen-year-old first generation American do? Sievert leaves home for the goldfields of the Arizona Territory. What he finds is a world of contrasts; a mentor who is his father's diametric opposite, a young woman who takes him to new emotional heights, and depths, a "do it to them before they do it to you" society that is anything but a sure thing. His success is stolen, his honesty betrayed, and with the pull of a trigger, his views of right and wrong are altered forever. But through his wild ride of victories and defeats, a dormant bulb flowers. It guides him to happiness, and a second chance at his dream.
Something Bad, October 2007
Gabe Petersen can't cross the borders of his rural Tri-county area--even the thought triggers the erratic cardiac rhythm and breathing difficulty of a panic attack. And he doesn't know why. His memories stop at twelve years of age, his early years nonexistent.
But when a strange little man arrives in town, Gabe feels an Unsettling sense of familiarity. Then families begin to die, all because of bizarre natural disasters, and the events trigger glimmers of memory for Gabe. Memories pointing to Thibideaux, the strange little man.
Returning memories open a door on rusty hinges in Gabe's mind. Behind the door is a catatonic Catholic priest who fled the area years ago after he was found sitting on the church altar surrounded by the slaughtered remains of several animals. And Gabe now remembers . . . he was there. Along with Thibideaux.
The past explodes, revealing Gabe's deepest fears. This time his family is Thibideaux's prize. And Gabe's only weapon to defend them is him mind. . . .
Agnes Hahn, August 2008
At the age of four Agnes Hahn went to live with her great aunts Gert and Ella. Now Gert is deceased and Ella is in a care home in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. Her life is mundane, her work at the animal shelter routine. And then she is arrested for a string of unimaginably heinous murders.
Reporter Jason Powers is covering the murders, but he has more than newspaper copy in mind; this case has bestseller potential. He soon uncovers a tangle of Hahn family secrets and one both shocks and intrigues him--Agnes has a twin.
Just when Powers is breaking through Ella's dementia to put together the puzzle behind the carnage, Ella is murdered by another of the family secrets, Gert and Ella's brother Eddie.
Then Eddie is murdered with clear fingerprint evidence implicating Agnes. When Powers unearths the final family secret he also answers a nagging question: Why did the aunts take only Agnes thirty years ago?
Imola, September 2009
Agnes Hahn is back, escaped from Imola with nothing but a white lab coat and security badges. Trouble is her twin sister, Lilin, is with her and their path is likely to be littered by a trail of murdered men. Can Agnes defeat Lilin once again to stop the killing?