Böcker av James Paddock

Hieronymus is not only ready to die, he wants to die. It's his time; however, the laws of Florida forbid him from carrying it out on his own. Self-murder they label it. How many of the youngsters-a title he freely applies to anyone under the age of sixty-five-who put their blessings on such a law would change their minds about the whole self-murder thing once they, themselves, come to realize their days are at an end and there is no point in trying to hold on, that there is no longer a life while certain death hoovers about them like a cold fog? And then when they do die why does the law make it so hard on their survivors? These are things Hieronymus thinks about while carefully navigating his oxygen tank from the bed to the bathroom to the kitchen to the sofa. Sometimes he goes to the window to gaze out at the golf course, regretting the choices he'd made in his life, irritated that so often they weren't his choices at all. It was about time he did something right; took control of his final choice, his choice as to how and when to die. What could possibly go wrong?

Three women in black gaze over the cemetery during Zach's memorial in Texas and then again later in Montana as they prepare to mix his ashes across Lake Tanya so that the two, Zach and Tanya, can finally be back together. It's the events in between that have their daughters, Reba and Christi, wondering if they're on the road to a future as old maid cat sisters. Then Jaxton and Myranda Burchfield knock on their door wanting their help in finding out their origins. Were they several of the cloned babies born in the bowels of Sans Sanssabre in the early nineties? Also, whatever happened to Lance Evans, Sans Sanssabre's second in command? Was anything done with the property after the company went up in flames? "Take us there," Jaxton says while placing a jaw-dropping amount of money on the table. Christi is excited for no other reason than Jaxton is fine looking, about her age, and has his own Gulfstream. As far as Reba goes, she's not excited at all. It'd mean two things. First was that she'd be returning to where Smilodon still lives, the Sabre-Toothed Cats that at one time viewed Reba as their-putting one word to the description-queen. So what if there was Blackfeet in her family tree. That was five generations back. There was no way she was the Spirit of Knifetooth Running Cat that was coming to take back the Blackfeet land. Second, and almost as troubling, was that returning to that part of Montana could mean having to possibly interact with Matt Shwartzberg again, the guy she lost to her best friend twelve years before. As the Gulfstream's wheels touch the runway in Kalispell, Montana, Reba tries to put all her apprehensions aside. What could possibly go wrong?

Annie seldom thought about her age, certainly never talked about that summer in 1943 when her mother birthed her, about the fact that her mother died that same year, or that it might have been in 1987-there was no way of knowing for sure-or about the fact that after 64 years she had yet to observe her 20th birthday. Already a Iraq War widow, Annie Caschetta must escape the oppressiveness around her and all the memories of her husband. With the semester over at MIT and the dreaded summer looming upon her, she chooses to escape to a cabin near Glacier National Park where she can sort through her thoughts and memories. However, it is her final, regrettable words during her last few moments with her husband that follow her and continue to haunt her. It is those words which she knows must be fixed, must be unsaid, if she is ever to have a real life again. If only she had a wormhole.

Through a series of small errors and oversights - a missed phone message, an unlocked high-security door, a lax in protocol, a falling purse - eight-month pregnant Annabelle Waring unknowingly stumbles into her husband's time-travel experiment. She awakens in a 1943 Charleston Navy Shipyard barracks with no memory of the event. Her existence and her sanity become questionable; if not for her newborn baby and a Charleston, South Carolina police officer, she would certainly have checked herself into the funny farm. Her doctor, alias German spy, learns before she does that she is not only a time-traveler, but a highly educated woman in the field of nuclear science and World War II history. When she finally discovers her own secret, Anne must strive to get both her and her infant daughter home, even at the risk to her own life.

She's a single mom and a retired CIA special agent. On her daughter's eleventh birthday-in a clandestine manner-she's pulled back in to save her nation from a second terrorist attack. What she wasn't aware of as she headed off on what would be a highly successful mission was that she would miss many, many more birthdays and that for ten years she wouldn't have a clue that she even had a daughter named Julianne, nor that Julianne's special nickname was Princess Jewel. As Jewel approaches her twenty-first birthday, she decides she has waited long enough for her mother's return. She's an adult now, and she wants answers.

Detective Parker DuPont turned in his letter of resignation (he forgot to tell his wife) and is just weeks away from officially hanging his P.I. shingle, when he catches his first case. At first he thinks it's a joke being played upon him by a colleague jokester. It is certainly not a joke. Charlie Porter was struck by a golf ball and killed on the sixth fairway of a Riverview, Florida golf course. Accidental death by golf ball, it is ruled. But there are no witnesses, nor does anyone come forward to fess up as to being the individual who hit the ball. Charlie's wife at first believes it was not an accident, but a payback for crimes committed decades before. She soon recants, claiming simple ravings of a distraught widow. Charlie's employer, however, chooses to go forward with the investigation, directing Parker to find the answers. Was it accidental? If not, who was the killer? What is Mrs. Porter really hiding? And who the heck is Parker's partner, ex-secret service agent, Stormy Stine? A grandmother looking for work?