Suzie Housley, Midwest Book Review…”Parsons writes with an intense purpose that will leave the reader fully satisfied. Masterfully crafted…readers will find themselves unable to put this book down.”

Cambridge, Massachusetts…Detective Karl Shea is drinking Tanqueray London Dry Gin, straight up, at a bar in Harvard Square. He hasn’t been to church in thirty years, but the prayer he learned to the rhythmic tap of the nuns’ rulers ruminates through his brain…confess my sins, do penance, and amend my life, Amen. Amend. With less than a year to live, Karl knows he has to start amending now if he’s to secure that friendly nod at the pearly gates.
There’s his wife. He’s been a womanizing, beer-guzzling, crappy husband to Shirley every day of their marriage. It won’t be easy, but he’ll earn her forgiveness. And there’s the matter of his last case. A child gone missing from her mother’s boyfriend’s backyard. He’ll find her, even if it kills him, as amends for the one he let slip through his fingers.
So, the redemption plan is complete. Follow the doctor’s orders, quit the cigarettes and cut down on the booze, say sorry to Shirley, and find a missing child.

But not so fast, Karl. Turns out, Shirley wants a lot more than an almost-on-your deathbed apology, and she’s holding you to it. And as for the missing kid…

Winner of the 2021 Fiction Award from the Independent Publishers of New England

When the known stalker of a young woman is arrested for her murder, it should be an open-and-shut case for DI Charlie West.

A woman is found bludgeoned to death in a swimming pool. A pensioner who disappeared many moons ago turns up out of the blue. A cockeyed boxer has more success outside the ring than in it.

What connects these events may or may not be the clue DI Charlie West is looking for to solve the latest murder on her patch.

With her mentor James Munro recovering from heart bypass surgery, she will have to rely on her own wits and those of her trusted team to progress the investigation.

But just when West has a likely suspect in custody and looks set to finally cut the apron strings, Munro returns to the scene – his enforced repose having done little to dent his appetite for the finer and richer things in life – with an oblique angle on the case.

Has West got it right, or will her suspect go free and the investigation have to start from square one?

She thought recovering from a devastating injury would be the hardest challenge of her young life. She could not have been more wrong…

Two seasons ago, then-fifteen-celebrations-old Lake-Ellen Redwood’s Path in life changed when she became a fledgling Lady of the Leaves. On the morning she attempts to resume her lifelong goal of becoming a guild-certified accountant, she suffers a lightning strike while meditating beneath the massive Heart of the Forest.

Fearful the incident blasted into her the devil rumored to be slumbering within the two-millennia-old tree, the local ruling council banishes her under penalty of death. Forced to flee, she travels to her uncle’s house in a distant city to heal in anonymity.

At first, her recovery goes well. But as the season turns and the telltale signs of possession manifest, and the death toll rises, Lake-Ellen is forced to confront the all-too-real possibility that a being of unimaginable power has rooted within her, putting the city in grave danger, and bringing frantic authorities in pursuit. In addition, she’s receiving calls for help from a second devil, somewhere else in her world.

Only the fires of decoherence will set her free—at the cost of her life. No one will settle for anything less…

During the day when there is a break in the day’s labor or in the evenings when the sunlight is waning, stories are told from Texas porches.

Although these are usually short stories, they can be long, and thus continued at the next porch sitting. They contain humor, sadness, suspense, mystery, philosophy, and instruction about the human condition and, in general, the journey of living. The storytellers find the rhythm of life for themselves, and the listeners hear valuable lessons and truth. Tales from the Texas Timberlands, Volume 1 celebrates this storytelling about East Texans with five unique and descriptive short stories. They are tales to soak up and remember.

J. Andrew Rice is also the author of the novel, Seeds of Bliss.

Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, Chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to running the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. What was the key to his success? Hard work and exceptional business savvy? Maybe. But more than anything else, Mike benefitted from deregulation of the American food industry, a phenomenon that has consolidated wealth in the hands of select tycoons, and along the way, hollowed out the nation’s rural towns and local businesses.Along with Mike McCloskey, readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will discover how a small grain business transformed itself into an empire bigger than Koch Industries, with ample help from taxpayer dollars. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay—especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil.

These, and the other stories in this book, are simply examples of the monopolies and ubiquitous corruption that today define American food. The tycoons profiled in these pages are hardly unique: many other companies have manipulated our lax laws and failed policies for their own benefit, to the detriment of our neighborhoods, livelihoods, and our democracy itself. Barons paints a stark portrait of the consequences of corporate consolidation, but it also shows we can choose a different path. A fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible—if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.