Böcker utgivna av Encircle Publications, LLC

Suspended for one year from her position as homicide investigator for the Rhode Island State Police for issuing an OUI to a powerful congressman who demands a public apology, Claire Evergreen is not content to sit around collecting unemployment for twelve months. She learns of an open position for sheriff of the small town of Smoky Point on Long Island, applies, and to her surprise, gets the job.Smoky Point is a sleepy little town on the easternmost point of Long Island which relies heavily on tourism for its livelihood. Claire inherits a small staff of three deputies: Turley, an older, seasoned veteran; Knox, a young man waiting for bigger things; and Rose, a middle-aged single parent just trying to get by. As she acclimates herself to small-town life, Claire reads arrest reports from previous years and notices a serious spike in crime from Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is no surprise since that's the height of the tourist season. What is a surprise is how many motorcycle gang members from Rhode Island are arrested in Smoky Point each summer.She recognizes some of the names, being familiar with them from her years as a trooper before being promoted to homicide. Claire assigns Rose the task of pulling all arrest records on one particular motorcycle club, The Disciples.

Gangsters and hoodlums prey upon people's weaknesses for a quick buck in an era that saw few bucks to spare, making criminals of everyday folks in the rural Great Depression. In a place as wild as the West ever was, during the heyday of the badmen and the lawmen, the law is in short supply. U.S. Marshal Nelson Lane chases a fleeing murder suspect from the frontier of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming all the way to the big city of El Reno in Oklahoma―out of his element in both places and nearly everywhere in between. His only help is an Indian rookie deputy sheriff, and she is as wild as any young woman of the time with access to booze and men-not much help to a widower alcoholic struggling in recovery. While she might get Nelson killed unintentionally, a shady sheriff dealing in illicit booze, his henchman warning Nelson to leave, and run-of-the-mill moonshiners just taking care of business are trying to take him out from all sides.

This eclectic collection of short stories features various genres, all penned by the authors of Encircle Publications. Their novels represent mysteries, thrillers, literary fiction, humor, historical fiction, romance, and more. We are very proud of our amazing authors and their work, and now Encircle has brought their short fiction together, amounting to twenty-two stories, for readers to explore and enjoy.Featured authors: Mike Befeler, Richard J. Cass, Dane Cobain, Matt Cost, Sharon L. Dean, Catherine Dilts, Bruna Gomes, Vaughn C. Hardacker, Joe Kilgore, J. K. Knauss, Scott Lipanovich, BJ Magnani, S. Lee Manning, Alison L. McLennan, Anne Britting Oleson, Jay Ruud, Lois Schmitt, CB Shanahan, Kevin St. Jarre, Karen Hanson Stuyck, A. J. Thibault, and Lara Tupper.Proceeds from the sale of this short story collection will be donated to ProLiteracy. ProLiteracy builds the capacity of adult literacy programs to transform lives and communities. To learn more, visit www.proliteracy.org.

Fresh out of the territorial prison, Tucker Ashley meets up with his old friend Jack, who staked a claim along Deadwood Gulch at the beginning of the Black Hills gold rush. But they arrive at the claim to find it has been jumped by two men. Jack and Tucker kick them off, only to be confronted by rule enforcers for the mining district-Zell McGinty and his son, Trait, gunmen known for their ruthlessness. Tucker's long prison sentence-away from the daily practice of gun handling-has deadened his skills, so he and Jack are powerless to resist them and are forced off their claim.They learn that miners all along the gulch have been killed. Indians are being blamed-until Jack and Tucker uncover that most of them were murdered by the McGintys, who'd filed with the mining district for the dead men's claims. The dead include the son of Ramona Hazelton of Hazelton Oil, who was killed and scalped, a Lakota arrow in his back. She offers a reward for the Indian who killed her son, sending a swarm of greedy miners into the hills to find him, but few of them return.When the McGintys find out Tucker has uncovered their murderous scheme, Trait goes on the hunt for Tucker. But Tucker's legendary skills with a pistol still have to be relearned, and all the while, he's looking over his shoulder, waiting to be confronted by the deadly gunman.

To read Body Be Sound is to step into the world of an observant poet. She misses nothing, from the way syrup flows inside a tightly packed jar of preserved tomatoes to how a manatee is feminized by the sea. More than anything, these luminous poems will fill you with wonder, a much-needed sentiment in these, or any other, times. -Sayantani Dasgupta, author of Women Who Misbehave and Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, & the In-Between

Lawyer Drew Brauner's dream job with the Rose Creek historical amphitheater has devolved into wrangling contentious cats-and those cats have claws. The leading man is a disaster waiting to happen, with more enemies than the musical Oklahoma! has dance steps.IT expert Callie Garcia's dream life at the Double C Ranch takes a nightmarish turn when her husband's alcoholic cousin shows up with no memory of the previous night. Clint believes in supporting family no matter what, but Callie draws the line when the police become involved.Mathematician Shanice Hailey thought she'd met the man of her dreams-until he left for an extended business trip. Now, she fears he's giving her the long-distance brushoff. When her match-making sisters pressure her to return to Chicago, Shanice wonders if it's time to leave Rose Creek behind. A feral cat leads chemist Makenzie Selkirk to a litter of kittens-trapped by a body in Farmer Nibley's cornfield. Eager to help the cat, and to find the killer, Makenzie's amateur sleuthing endangers her budding relationship with Deputy Sage.The Rose Creek Reads Book Club tackles a new murder mystery with too many suspects and not enough clues.

Private Investigator Brig Ellis is on his way to spread the ashes of a friend with whom he once soldiered. His nostalgic journey soon becomes a nightmare, however, when hideous murders occur and Ellis is labeled the prime suspect. The more information that comes to light, the more it looks as if the killings might have something to do with a military mission that went off the rails years ago. Soon, Ellis is on the run, trying to solve the mystery and stay out of the authorities' clutches. While the police are hot on his trail, his pursuit of the real killers takes Ellis not only across the country but deep into the past as well. What's the connection between the mission that resulted in a night he'll never be able to forget and the horror happening around him now? Could any of his former squad mates be involved? Are they even still alive? And if so, for how long? The clock is ticking and the bodies are falling as Ellis searches for answers.

The Bucket of Blood Saloon is robbed, but the kind of hard cases that terrorize 1870s Dakota Territory don't stop there: the owner is murdered and one of his upstairs girls is abducted. Tucker Ashley is back in action. This time, he's gotten himself talked into tracking for the posse-but only because the kidnapped girl is his best friend's fiancée. Tucker leads the pathetic posse-made up of a couple of cattle rustlers, a gambler, and a blacksmith nearly too large to sit on a horse-in pursuit of outlaws so brutal that even the Army turned around rather than confront Justice Cauther and his ruthless gang.

Aventurine Morrow is alone in Lincoln, England, attempting to overcome writer's block while researching a new subject, Katherine Swynford. Here she befriends a cathedral tour guide, Henry Hallsey, whose daughter Nicola has gone missing. When a woman is found dead on the grounds of the Old Bishop's Palace, and the Swynford Jewel is stolen, Aventurine falls under suspicion. With police dogging her every step, Avi must seek the help of wily former spy, Genevieve Smithson. In the midst of all this, Gio Constantine reappears-but Gio might not merely be the sensitive singer-songwriter he appears to be.

A corpse is found lashed to a submerged cabin under the Missouri River just south of a Sioux Indian reservation... A corpse tied there perhaps seventy years ago... A corpse shot and tied there just before the river was flooded over a resort island first discovered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition...FBI Agent Manny Tanno is assigned to assist local law enforcement in the decades-old homicide. Suspects abound, including the owner of a trucking company and a long-dead Lakota Code Talker for the Army in World War Two.And dangers abound as a deputy sheriff also investigating the case is murdered. Manny's life is threatened as he's repeatedly attacked, barely escaping death himself. Will he survive to solve the cold case and the killing of the young deputy sheriff? Is there even a chance he can find the killer of the deputy? Or any chance the murderer of the floating man is still among the living? Manny must dodge bullets as he works to stay alive long enough to catch the killers.

Dynastic succession in criminal organizations is rarely uncontested. When Leo Dunleavy, Chief of Buffalo's Homicide Squad, rolls up on a burning house with a mob underboss bleeding in the front yard and money blowing around in the street, he knows a war has erupted to succeed the declining Don. Dunleavy and his squad move against them and he reignites his personal hunt to catch the mysterious killer he has been tracking for three decades.

Jeff Taylor is fresh out of medical school and prepping for the state licensing exam. He and wife Karen Brady have moved to Fallen Leaf Lake, near South Lake Tahoe. Karen is on the East Coast attending a family reunion while Jeff stays in California to study.Perusing a local newspaper, Jeff reads about the death of a famous water skier, Brett Boyd, who lived at an exclusive high-country enclave known as Sky Lake. Brett and Jeff were close childhood friends but they hadn't communicated in years. Jeff didn't even know his old friend lived in the area. In a kind of pilgrimage, Jeff drives to secluded Sky Lake and locates Brett's cabin. A stranger packing heat arrives in a battery-powered cart and tells Jeff to get lost. Thus begins Jeff's suspicions about the death of his high school friend. Within a month, three other water skiers are killed. Jeff devotes himself to catching the murderer. Along the way, he tangles with the darkness that resides beneath the region's glorious facade.

When retired maintenance man Frank Sinatra finds Darell Willows's body in the swimming pool of the Last Gasp Motel in Omnipodge, California, Frank must deal with the responding police officer making wisecracks about his name while trying to figure out what happened.Detective Duke Lambert arrives and quizzes Frank. Frank agrees to help the detective, whom he has worked with before. Suspects include the residents of the Last Gasp and the son and daughter-in-law of the unpopular victim.The aging residents are a quirky lot including chain-smoking manager Hedda Robinson; kleptomaniac Carolyn Bryant; "Accident" Al Utley, who causes traffic accidents and then collects money from the other drivers; dog-poop vigilante Pat Pope known as "Mr. Poop"; good Samaritan Mira Neighbors; potassium-obsessed, banana-chomping Banny Zamora; flower petal-scattering Gladys Terry; womanizer Caruthers Quinter; authority-avoiding Varenka; and conspiracy-theory nut Ethel Ogden. Each of the suspects argued recently with the deceased-and all of them have reasons to want him dead. The eccentric tenants must work together to solve the case before the city demolishes the place they call home and replaces it with a shopping mall-the race is on to find the killer and save the Last Gasp Motel!

Leaving Freedom took Connie Lewis from her home in Freedom, Massachusetts, to Florida with her aging mother, and then to Ashland, Oregon, where she found success as a writer and a place to call home. Now, forty years later, Connie is eighty years old and has exchanged the Volkswagen she called The Yellow Sub for a Honda Fit she's nicknamed Last Chance. She's ready for one last adventure. Finding Freedom follows her on a road trip back to the Freedom she left behind so many years ago. When she arrives, she faces the decision about where to spend her last years of living. Will it be the Massachusetts where she was born, the Oregon she has learned to call home, or somewhere she hasn't expected?

Freedom, Massachusetts: by 1973, thirty-year-old Connie Lewis sees only irony in the name. She's ready to leave her hometown and move with her recently widowed mother to Florida, freed of financial worry to write the novel that's been languishing in her imagination. The novel's title--Secrets--turns out to be as ironic as the name of her hometown. Her mother, her sister, and the man she befriends in Florida all keep secrets. In a nine-year journey that will take her from Massachusetts to Florida to Oregon, Connie discovers ways to make peace with what she has learned and to decide what place she should call home.

Langdon is hired to find a man who answered a classified ad and then disappeared into thin air. And then a second person vanishes. What starts as a couple of simple missing-person cases quickly spirals into a diabolical world of witches, wiccans, and wendigos. "You ever hear of the Church of Satan?" Jewell asked. There was silence around the fire. The flames danced and flickered, casting shadows in the dark May night. Langdon took the bottle from Richam and poured himself another... Bart, the dour but poetic cop, is back, even if demoted to a blue uniform. The dapper lawyer, Jimmy 4 by Four, is up to his regular philandering ways. Richam is hiding a secret from Jewell, and Chabal makes a new friend... And then goes missing. What is going to happen during the Super Flower Blood Moon? And who is the Wendigo? This time, Langdon might be too late to solve these mysteries before the blood flows.

A burglar shatters big-city lawyer Drew Brauner's confidence in her rash move to a small Oklahoma town. The same night, a frightening visit from a prowler ruins IT expert Callie Garcia's romantic dinner with her cowboy husband. The women meet at the new Rose Creek Reads Book Club, seeking distraction from the unsettling events.Shy chemist Makenzie Selkirk joins them. The hometown girl is a diehard fan of Rose Creek, nestled beside the Ozark foothills. The club is off to a great start... until the shop's cat makes a horrifying discovery. The book club flier promised readers the chance to discuss novels and make new friends. It didn't say anything about finding a body. The autopsy implicates the historic factory where Makenzie works. She jumps into the investigation partly to stop protestors from shutting down Brieswell Pottery Works, and partly to spend time with a handsome deputy. Clues are sparse, until Callie discovers a peculiar number. She invites Shanice Hailey to the book club, hoping the university mathematician can break the code. When Callie introduces Shanice to a horse-whisperer, she learns match-making might be as tricky as solving a murder.The new friends play at being detectives-until the mystery becomes deadly serious.

Praise for Russell Rowland"Dear Mr. Rowland, thank you for the poems you gave me ... There is a lot happening here (i.e. in the poems), and I hope you will be able to give poetry some major attention. Clearly you already have. Yours truly, Donald Hall." -Postcard from Donald Hall, 14th U.S. Poet LaureateDr. Rowland is an artist at interweaving the threads of nature, with mankind's journey through it, into a tapestry that connects the earthly to the spiritual. New Hampshire's hills, streams and settlements form the panorama for his artistry. Surveying that scene, Rowland often peers through the present into the past, with its inhabitants and activities-as one reflects when coming across the old stone pasture walls that run through the Granite State's deep second-growth woods. -Shirley Anne Leonard, Editor, WestWard Quarterly magazine

In the Dakota Territory of the 1870s, outlaws-schooled in cruelty during the War Between the States-roam and prey upon anyone unfortunate enough to cross their trail. And the line between outlaw and lawman is often blurred. Some of those sworn to protect the helpless might exploit them instead. Some of those deemed hard cases might yet redeem themselves. Backed to the Wall plunges a lawman and an outlaw into a bloody battle that only one of them can survive-if the Indian raiders terrorizing the local homesteaders and cattlemen don't kill them first.

Larry Ahearne's death in Afghanistan has had a traumatic effect on his friends and family back in Painter's Springs. His best friend Alaric Morgan-who witnessed Larry's last moments-suffers from PTSD-induced mutism, which has forced him to leave the army; only his young niece Isabella seems to understand the depths of his distress.Larry's sister Marty, an artist who is stalled in her tracks, bears the brunt of their mother's grief and fury, only supported by her friend and housemate Caro and Caro's daughter Sophie. The one thing they all have in common, though, is Larry's 1971 Bronco, in storage since his enlistment. Now, restoring that truck is the one thing that might hold them all together.

What do you do when you're accused of an unspeakable crime and know you're innocent, but the evidence against you is so compelling? After six years as a high school English teacher, Alexis Jordan thinks her biggest problems are a case of burnout and her suspicion that her husband is having an affair. Then things take a sudden, unexpected turn that threatens to end her marriage, wreck her career, and destroy her life when the student she's coaching for the school play makes a pass at her and she turns him down. Alexis doesn't realize that he is obsessed with her and has been building toward this moment for months. Nor that when he's rejected, he will set out to destroy her with his version of their "affair"-which is terrifyingly plausible.

A young American, seeking escape from a tragic event, takes a job with an international conservation organization in the foreign port of Retiro de Santos. There, he becomes romantically involved with a local artist, and platonically involved with a young girl pursuing a better life. Soon his environmental group is sabotaged, his coworker dies mysteriously, and his young friend is shanghaied. Finding himself on the wrong side of unjust laws, he must decide whether to act or abdicate responsibility. As he teeters precariously on the edge of a decision, a raging storm barrels ashore to threaten everyone and everything in its path.