BEGIN A CONVERSATION WITH PATRICK, IF YOU DARE . . . On Patrick's Pacific Northwest Island home, people whisper about his family's sad history. Some feel sorry for him. Most want to help Patrick, as if he's a song-less bird, make him their next project, and even set him up on a date with a best friend . . . On one such date, Wendy sits across from Patrick and confesses she's afraid to die, and says: -My mother died a year ago . . . horribly.- Patrick listens and pretends to care. He keeps his own dark secret safe that way. There's something wrong with the way Patrick treats the women he...

A small college town's populace is tied, complicitly, to the brutal, bullying, attack of a teenage boy by four of his classmates. Soon, heated rumors of a possible hate crime surface. Injustice is a hungry beast. AN ADULTEROUS FATHER IS HAUNTED BY HIS PAST -- HIS WIFE LIVES HER LIFE IN A RIGID SHELL -- THEIR SON, UNTETHERED, DISCOVERS THE SECRET THEY SHARE WITH DEEPIKA, A VISITOR TO THEIR TOWN FROM NORTHERN INDIA. "I see all of these people. They're living and breathing and acting on their basest impulses. I lay in a coma. They live. I hover over all of them, all at once. I can see my body,...

HARK'S SIX LITERARY HOLIDAY TALES ARE NOT FOR KIDS-THEY ARE FOR DISCERNING ADULTS CONTEMPLATING MORE THAN SIMPLE SUGARPLUM SWEETNESS. Within Hark: A Christmas Collection, a retired police officer faces another Christmas Eve while bitter recollections haunt his every turn, a lonely businesswoman plans to seduce Santa Claus one Christmas Eve, a widow grows anxious searching for a misplaced present she intended to send to her ungrateful sister, a stubborn and brave woman can't keep the images of her past-these ghosts-from haunting the life she chooses to live; while attending a Christmas party...

"Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer "-Richard Bach The twelve literary, suspense tales and dark vignettes collected in Sandcastle and Other Stories are nothing short of an adventure through a roiling sea of emotion. You'll listen as an old man twisted by fate and a lost love shares his life's journey . . . marvel at a young girl playing on the ocean shore as she becomes entangled in nets of a mercurial god . . . witness a divorced man become mired in troubles after he's coerced into taking a singles cruise . . . follow a Hollywood actor in a television drama who's...