McGowan's Return is a suspense novel which derives its energy from the convergence of three sets of characters and events. The pace of the story quickens when a Lakewood Detective realizes a connection between the murders of three women, a fact that had remained elusive because the killings were separated by years. The result, however, is always the same. In each case, a woman has been strangled, and left in Cleveland's Edgewater Park. Detective Darnell Wilson recognizes the pattern and poses the possibility that a single person may be responsible for all three murders. If he is right, a...

Before being known as Ohios Vacationland, north central Ohio was the Firelands, a title that predated statehood. In 1662 King Charles II granted territory extending west of Pennsylvania to the Pacific Ocean to be Connecticuts Western Reserve. The claim survived the Revolution, but the area was reduced considerably as settlement of war debts. Even so, the Western Reserve still covered more than three million acres which were later transferred to the Connecticut Land Company. One of the surveyors sent to lay out the territory was Moses Cleaveland who began his work in 1796. He charted the area...

Not since The Little Prince have adult readers been so strongly invited to set aside reason to take a journey of the heart. A nearly fatal car collision on a country road lands Jeff in a surgical suite clinging to life. His wife, Samantha, is there when he recovers consciousness, but he has another story to tell. The accident has apparently opened a portal to another world, a place where his physical injuries are simply a vague recollection of a different reality. The medical staff attributes his tale to brain injury, but he knows otherwise. How can he seriously convey his adventures in a...

My Life in the Cleveland Zoo is a ground-level report of a time when society was changing rapidly. In 1968, Adam Smith took a summer job at the zoo as a tour train driver. In this position, he lived in the margin between the public's experience and what seemed to him to be an alien world of full-time keepers and staff. In that gap, a lot of adolescent hijinks crept into the routine of the part-time summer employees who were out-of-control and flying beneath the radar of the management. After graduating college and spending some years in the corporate world, he found his way back to the zoo as...