MORPHINE DREAMS A decade ago, Charlie Brewster was on the Hollywood "A" list. Three best sellers, two hit movies, and one bomb later he lives in an apartment in Santa Barbara. As he once critically said, "It was hard to write with a coke spoon in one hand and a bottle in the other." Charlie now knows more waitresses at Denny's than maitre d's in Beverly Hills and he is okay with that. In the ensuing years he came to terms with fame's fleeting moments and lives his life with quiet equanimity. However, a bout of cancer has him worried about the brevity of life. It is time to reassess what went...

ADX PRAXIS ADX Praxis is the Bureau of Prisons' maximum-security facility at Red Lake. It serenely overlooks the water from Cramsden Point. Behind its fences, walls, and rumored death strips resides the scum of the penal system. Praxis also holds political prisoners, enemies of the state, men convicted of terrorism, spying, and treason. On "D" block, these traitors live twenty-four, seven, in complete isolation. When they move, cameras and electronic gates control it. Guards watch by monitors. Rarely do they see anyone face to face. Eddie Ames, who is treading financial water as a security...

A 20-year-old cold case... An ambitious politician... A festering secret... In the quiet resort town of Red Lake, mummified remains are discovered. Sheriff Gaines suspects the body could be that of missing-person Alison Albright who disappeared twenty years ago: his first case as Sheriff and the one he never solved. Ambitious young lawyer J. Travis Parks (Cast the First Stone), concerned that his connection to the victim could derail his campaign for public office, hires Harry Grim (ADX Praxis) to investigate. Harry finds his questions most unwelcome, and no shortage of locals with reason to...

Cast The First Stone When The New Life Redemption Church's decrepit bus kills the town drunk's wife and daughter, the man sues the church. However, justice is an uneven thing. After Robert Goodman loses in court, he takes justice into his own hands. In a cross between Dog Day Afternoon and The Apostle, he takes the congregation hostage. On a sweltering summer evening, as the police ring the clapboard building, he gives an altar call at the point of a gun. "Are there twenty who will die, so the rest may live?" he asks. "Are there ten?" "Are there five?" This story explores how the human spirit...

Julia and Jillian Blackwell were sisters, but the men they married could not be more different. Julia's husband, Harvey Stockman, is a conservative, law and order Republican with aspirations in government who is also worried his wife is having an affair. Jillian married Vito Donatello works for the mob, smuggling drugs from Juarez. Mexico, when he's not chasing women. When Donatello offends Salvador Montoya the head of the Cuerpos Cartel by making a pass at his daughter, Montoya avenges his insulted honor by ordering a hit on Vito's wife. In Las Vegas, Rico Marcelli worries about Vito's...