Be An Adult Until Noon

All Becca wanted was a fresh start. That wasn’t what she got.

Becca was sure the move from New York to Redemption, Wisconsin was exactly what her troubled family needed. A way to get her crumbling marriage back on track, and to bond with her difficult 16-year-old stepdaughter.

But instead of a new beginning, Becca is thrust into a mysterious past she barely remembers. A past that includes the complications of interacting with her old teenage crush, Daniel, as well as living in her aunt’s old house.

A house with a violent past. A house the locals swear is haunted.

But there’s no such thing as ghosts. Right?

So, could there be something even more sinister out to destroy them?

And can Becca discover the truth before it’s too late?

The coastal Oregon town of Rainbow Falls might be sleepy, but it’s definitely not innocent…
When graphic designer and true crime fan Annie Abbott agrees to house sit her parents’ home for a year, she’s convinced that even though the small town has ten coffee shops, nothing exciting will happen. But that’s before a seemingly feral cat gives birth in her garage, prompting a call to the very handsome, very single town vet. It’s a dream meet-cute, but just as their romance blooms, Annie discovers the bloody body of her grumpy neighbor. And despite the fact that she passes out at the sight of blood, the police suspect her.

To clear her name, Annie will need to put her years of watching police procedurals and reading mysteries to good use. She’ll also need to rely on her new friends who have welcomed her to Rainbow Falls, but is one of them the killer?

Lindsey Hunter never imagined she’d be returning to her Cape Cod home pregnant and divorced, but she’s determined to build a new life for her and her unborn baby. When car trouble leaves her stranded on the side of the road, ex-Marine Damien Trent rides to the rescue on his motorbike. Once upon a time, they’d been friends and briefly, they’d been something more… until he enlisted and left her behind. As Lindsey and Damien reconnect, the attraction is still as strong as ever. But Lindsey’s knows Damien’s not the staying kind.

Damien would rather do anything than come home to deal with his father’s estate. After years of abuse, he was more than ready to leave town the moment he graduated. With Lindsey back in his life, everything is complicated. He’s used to being a lone wolf – until Lindsey and her newborn baby give him a glimpse of the kind of family and future he’s always dreamed of. Can he be brave enough to reach out and grab it?

Shanghai, August 1937

Following the destruction of his nightclub, Chinese American ex-pat Tom Lai now runs an import-export company for the Green Gang – Shanghai’s ruthless crime syndicate. Tensions are again escalating between Japan and China and to make matters worse, Tom’s debts to the Gang are suddenly called in to fund the war effort.

A glimmer of hope appears when a mysterious Russian émigré, Yuri Razinkov, shows up on Tom’s doorstep. As a secret agent in the anti-Communist White Guard, Razinkov offers Tom a job in his private war against the Soviet Union. Smuggle a certain Russian out of Shanghai and Tom will earn enough money to square his debts with the Green Gang and start a new nightclub. Suspicious, but without any other options, he accepts.

The Russian in question is a Red Army officer – Colonel Andrei Borisenko – who’s desperate to escape Stalin’s brutal purge and flee to America. But other parties are interested in Borisenko too, namely Zoya Chaikina, a ruthless agent of the Soviet Security Service. There’s also Tom’s old nemesis, Jiro Fukuzaki, chief of Japanese Naval Intelligence, who now commands a small army of black-shirted Russian Fascists.

As Shanghai swelters under the summer sun, Tom finds himself trapped in a dangerous web of international espionage. Aided by his on-again/off-again girlfriend – the American Consulate officer, Liz Swanson – Tom peels back the layers of a conspiracy that’s far bigger than himself or even Shanghai.

Book 2 of the Tom Lai series, Reds and Whites is a historical thriller, recreating the bygone world of 1930s Shanghai, from its glittering nightclubs to its smoky opium dens, in vivid detail.

This is the story of a man who hated running as a child but ended up completing the Marathon des Sables. It follows my training from the first tentative steps, through my first marathon attempt, to a blow by blow account of the crushing lows and soaring highs of my time in the desert. This memoir is an expression and an explanation of my unlikely love affair with running.