The Lies That Bind
Once branded a liar...Charlie now seeks the truth.
Fifteen-year-old Charlie Sommerton told a lie. One that made her a celebrity. And not the shiny-can-I-have-your-autograph-kind. To escape the publicity and her devastation at failing to make her dance company’s summer tour, Charlie reluctantly takes a job as a nanny to a lonely little girl who lives in an exquisite glass house high in the Colorado Rockies. Once there she discovers the former nanny is missing and that someone in the family is a killer. But no one believes her. She also discovers not all is as it seems with the gorgeous Gibson family, including 16-year-old Evan Gibson, a scarred artist who finds comfort in shadowy places. Determined to prove she’s no longer a liar, Charlie vows to find the missing nanny and ends up uncovering this beautiful family’s ugly -- and deadly -- secret.
Welcome Caller, This Is Chloe
One lonely girl.One late night radio station.
One life changing moment.
Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe and loved by all until winter break of her junior year. That’s when her BF shreds her reputation and her school counselor axes her junior independent study project. Forced to take on a “more meaningful” project in order to pass her junior year, Chloe joins her school’s struggling radio station where she must team up with a group of misfits who don’t find her too queenly. Ostracized by her former BFs, lonely Chloe throws herself into the radio station where she ends up hosting a late-night call-in show that gets the station much needed publicity. And in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore. On and off the air, Chloe and Duncan learn sometimes funny, sometimes painful lessons about life, love, and what it means to be alone…and lonely.
Finalist - 2010 Golden Heart ®
bloom
A young adult novel about fish kisses, SAT vocab words, and a big white milk truck.But ultimately it’s the story of one girl finding the courage to dream. And do.
Sixteen-year-old Sophia Thornhill is polite, practically perfect, and a master of tricked-out, color-coded spreadsheets. But after the violent death and financial ruin of her father, she’s forced to give up her familiar, orderly world in New York and live with her estranged mother in hell, AKA Sedona, Arizona. Amidst the alien red rocks and surrounded by a spacey cast of New Age characters, Sophia struggles to earn money to get back to her beloved New York prep school where she feels safe. In control. She takes on three jobs and her irresponsible mother. But in the end, her biggest battle is with herself as she discovers the courage to confront secrets from her far-from-perfect past and open her damaged heart to a boy with a troubled past of his own.
Finalist - 2010 Golden Heart ®
First Runner-up - 2009 Marlene Contest
The Broken
A serial killer strikes,leaving behind only shattered mirrors
and broken lives.
Former broadcast journalist Kate Johnson is on the run, hiding from a knife-wielding madman who wants her dead and from a childhood that left her scarred. But when FBI profiler Hayden Reed vows to hunt down the serial killer known as the Broadcaster Butcher by first finding the one woman who survived the Butcher’s knife, Kate can’t hide anymore. Not from sexy FBI agent Hayden Reed who sees everything but feels nothing. And not from a madman who sees beauty and power in the blood.
Finalist - 2009 Golden Heart ®
Winner - 2008 Golden Pen
WInner - 2008 Kiss Of Death Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence, Single Title
Editor's Choice - 2008 SDSU Writer's Conference
The Lost
A mother’s guilt.A madman’s justice.
A hunt for the lost.
News librarian Taryn Wright is hiding. From a past that haunts her nights. And from a guilt that rules her days. But when a ten-month-old baby boy disappears from Taryn’s affluent Phoenix neighborhood, she can’t hide anymore. Not from her past. Not from the Phoenix police who’ve pegged her as a suspect. And not from Jon MacGregor, a child finder and former FBI hotshot with a troubled past of his own.
The hunted and the haunted, Taryn and Jon team up to find the missing Phoenix baby and clear Taryn’s name. Their search through the twilight sparks a passion neither of them expected and leads them to a brilliant psychopath playing games…and playing God.
Finalist - 2008 Golden Heart ®
Finalist - 2007 Golden Heart ®
Winner - 2007 Finally A Bride
The Buried - Work in Progress
It’s cold.And dark.
I can’t breathe...
Cypress Bend. A small southern bayou town filled with long-buried secrets. It’s also the home of successful, fiercely independent state prosecutor Grace Courtemanche who’s pulled into a world of terror and self-doubt when she begins to receive a series of phone calls from young women…buried alive.
In a race to stop a killer with a twisted need for revenge, Grace unearths skeletons from the past along with feelings for the one man she swore she’d never need again, Hatch Hatcher, a rootless, smooth-talking FBI negotiator who’s back in Cypress Bend to deal with a secret of his own.
The Bound - Work in Progress
Bound…by mistakes from her past
to a man with the power to destroy her future.
Special event planner Adeline Wells -- a buttoned-up, wanna-do-right former jewel thief -- craves respect and honor after a childhood filled with neither. She’s finally on the verge of both when Finn Brannigan, her former partner in crime and her father’s murderer, hunts her down for “one last score.”
What she doesn’t know is Finn Brannigan is now a jewelry and gem specialist with the FBI’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit, and he suspects that she’s the mastermind behind the California Ice Heists, a series of mega-dollar diamond thefts reminiscent of those pulled off by her long-dead father.
Adeline, aka Romi Swift, comes out swinging. She fights for honor. She fights for her business. She fights the shadowy figure who wants something from her less-than honorable past. And she fights Finn Brannigan, the boy she once worshipped and who long ago stole a piece of her heart.
Through The Shadows
A missing twin.A maze of deceit.
A chase through the shadows.
Public relations pro Madison Lyons is polite, proper and lives life according to "The Plan." But
when her sister disappears in the steamy jungles of South America, her sunny world plunges into darkness.
Renegade P.I. and former Tucson cop Court Lockwood has spent the past decade living in darkness.
A place well suited for hiding secrets.
Drawn into a tangle of blackmail, international smuggling and betrayal, Court and Maddie find themselves battling an unknown enemy. . . and each other. . . as they race through the shadows to find her sister, guarding their backs. . . and their hearts.
Finalist - 2005 Maggie
Finalist - 2005 Sheila