Four Novels (ePub)

Four Novels contains the following books, all of which can be purchased separately: Frontier Justice, The Great Barrington Train Wreck, The Blackwater Journal, and The Road Map to the Universe.

Frontier Justice describes the results of a crime that was committed by two teenagers when they stood on an overpass and hurled cement blocks at cars. One of the blocks went through the windshield of a car, which caused the car to jump over the median where it collided with another car and caused the death of eight people. During the apprehension of one of the perpetrators, a police officer named Adriana Jones persuaded the suspect to surrender his gun, but shortly later, he was shot to death. Adriana claims it was self-defense, but the prosecutor, after reviewing both Adriana's history and the evidence at the scene, charges her with second degree murder. Will she be convicted? And after reading the trial testimony, how would you have voted if you were on that jury?

The Great Barrington Train Wreck is the story of a homeless man. Living on the street isn't easy, but Mike Stratton knows his way around...at least until the day that he almost dies from hypothermia. Scrambling around, he finds a job as a cab driver, rents an apartment, and falls in love with his most beautiful fare, the enigmatic Alexandra Hughes. Alexandra has a boyfriend, but Mike is obsessed with her, and before long, it appears that she needs him—especially on the night when she tells him, through a flood of tears, that her father has murdered her boyfriend and is coming after her next. But all is not quite what it seems in this tale of a down-and-out guy who is never able to see through the smokescreen of his lust...or see through the erotic night he spends in bed with Alexandra...or see through Alexandra's mysterious disappearance...or see through his unexpected arrest for murder.

The Blackwater Journal: Sixteen-year-old Alanda Streets is trapped in a room from which there is no escape. There are padlocks on the door, the windows have been boarded up, and Alanda's only contact with humanity is her father, the man who has imprisoned her and told her that she must die because of the terrible secret that she has discovered in his past. There is nothing inside the room that Alanda can use to help free herself. Is there any way out? Or is her life about to come to an end?

Excerpt: And then, later, maybe someone besides my father will find my journal, and he or she will be reading it and feeling all the things that I had gone through before I died. However, the journal wouldn't end with my last entry—it would end with an epilogue after my last entry. And the epilogue would describe who had found my body, how I had died, and what, if anything, had happened to my father.

The Road Map to the Universe: Who really murdered Karen Breen? Although her husband is convicted of the crime, things change when an informant tells police that her son Jeremy was the murderer. Jeremy has always been a cool, laid-back guy who believes that none of us has any real significance in a universe of two hundred billion galaxies. Jeremy is arrested, tried, and convicted, but then, while the jury is being polled, an extraordinary revelation occurs—in fact, in the annals of courtroom history, it is probably a premiere.

Amazingly, this courtroom revelation seems to prove that Jeremy's belief system has some real potential. Because, in the end, it appears that the murder of Jeremy's mother is just one more example that everything we experience is based on the self-aggrandizing perceptions of the ego and that the belief in significance, any significance, is simply a symptom arising out of the peculiar notion that the entire universe revolves around oneself.