Chapter One

Alpha and Omega
Sunday, February 1, 2015 – 1:47 a.m.

Twenty-plus years with the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office taught Jonathan Gray to expect the unexpected. But Washington Square Park had always been a tranquil haven on the fringe of the French Quarter. So crime-scene tape draping the square’s wrought-iron fence presented the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Moonlight filtering through stately live oaks cast eerie—almost funereal—shadows, adding to the dissonance.

Fluttering in the nippy midwinter breeze, the neon-yellow ribbon communicated

a mute warning. On this side, normalcy. On the other, insanity. Stepping into the dysfunction never got easier. Regardless, turning back wasn’t an option. As if speaking the incantation aloud would immunize him against the unfolding drama, he repeated his trite pre-crime scene mantra: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” His breath lingered in the frosty air before evaporating.

After checking in with the uniformed officer monitoring access, Jonathan angled toward floodlights illuminating a temporary canopy above the city’s AIDS memorial. More tape—red as opposed to yellow—identified the innermost “Do Not Cross” perimeter. Crime scene technicians in white Tyvek protective suits busied themselves measuring and photographing what must be the reason he’d been summoned. A male corpse sitting upright on the ground—its arms and legs twisted at seemingly impossible angles—leaned against the memorial’s circular cut-glass and steel panels surrounded by a pool of thick, dark-crimson liquid.

A curved, nearly rectangular piece of wood with brass edges—most likely a knife handle—protruded from under the right side of the dead man’s rib cage. A portion of his intestines spilled out of the wound. A second knife—its handle and part of its blade visible—had been thrust downward into the soft tissue between the left collarbone and neck.

Cause of death seemed too obvious to require someone of Jonathan’s seniority. A first-year med student could have made the call. But markings carved into the dead man’s forehead and chest hinted at something more sinister. No wonder Mitch Broussard from NOPD had called him in the middle of the night. The man’s heavy flannel shirt lay open, exposing his chest and a series of

capital letters etched into his skin. The letters—G I D I A I D I V—made no sense, at least not in English. A folded piece of paper with similar letters and other symbols, not quite readable from that distance, lay under the man’s left hand. Lack of blood covering the letters in the chest signaled they had been added postmortem. Jonathan focused on two marks in the man’s forehead. An uppercase “A” and what looked like an upside-down horseshoe—the Greek letter Omega—apparently cut while the victim was still alive.

It couldn’t have been two years already. But there it was. Alpha and Omega. Jonathan bit his lip and cursed under his breath. Then, a silent prayer. Looked like the nightmare was about to begin—again.

One of the CSTs stood and raised her clear face shield. “Hey, Doc. Welcome to Funsville.”

Excerpt from SHADOWS OF FRENCHMEN by Michael Rigg. Copyright 2026 by Michael Rigg. Reproduced with permission from Michael Rigg. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

“Americans,” said my goddaughter, licking cheese and tomato sauce off her fingers, “eat twenty-three pounds of pizza every year.”

I looked at her suspiciously. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that Lily is precocious for a seven-year-old, but she also sometimes falls prey to what in artificial intelligence is known as hallucinations, and makes things up if she believes they’ll create a better story. “I don’t eat twenty-three pounds of pizza,” I said, even though we were in fact sitting at the Provincetown House of Pizza and contributing to the statistic.

“Not every American,” Lily conceded. “It’s an average.” She brightened. “So that means, some people eat way more than that!”

“That’s a lot of pizza,” I agreed. The truth is, I do regard it as a treat of sorts. I am part-owner of the Race Point Inn in Provincetown’s East End, and pizza is never featured on our Michelin-starred restaurant’s menu.

Besides, I like spending time with my goddaughter. When my best friend Mirela brought Lily back from Plovdiv in Bulgaria—where her sister had regarded the baby as an inconvenience and readily signed adoption papers so Mirela could bring Lily to the States—I hadn’t been quite as enthused. (To be fair, neither had Mirela: if there were ever someone who manifested zero maternal instincts, it’s her. As a mother, she’s something of a work in progress. That had not, however, stopped her from once becoming the fiercest mother bear ever out in the dunes when the baby’s life was threatened.)

In my defense, there aren’t that many non-parents who can truly embrace the demands of a baby, which morphed into the demands of a toddler, which finally metamorphosed into the very smart conversations one could now have with the girl sitting at the table with me.

“Did you know,” she said, “that some indigenous people call the earth Turtle Island?”

“I did not,” I said. She knows the word indigenous. Of course she does. “Are you going to eat that piece?”

She shook her head, intent on her thought. “The way the turtle shell is curved works okay for half the earth,” she said. “That makes sense. But what about the bottom half? And where does the turtle sit, or stand, and how come people don’t fall off the turtle? And if we’re on Turtle Island, why don’t we just float away? But if we did, what would we be floating on top of?”

“Good questions,” I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind an expression flitted by, turtles all the way down, but I couldn’t remember who said it or what it meant, and didn’t want to further complicate the conversation. I picked up the last slice of pizza and took a bite. “You could look them up and see.”

“Aunt Sydney,” she said to me with dramatic excessive patience, “I already did. I know how to do research! But no one knows.”

When I was seven, I probably didn’t even know the word research. I sighed. Maybe she could make it her dissertation topic. At the rate she was going, that was probably going to happen sometime next year. “It’s their story,” I said. “Lots of cultures have stories to explain how things work.”

“But if everybody’s got a different story, how do we know which one is true?”

We’d gone from alimentation to geography to metaphysics in under four minutes, which had to be a record of some kind. I was rescued by the arrival of my husband. “I see you didn’t save me any pizza,” he said, sitting down at the table and reaching over to tousle Lily’s hair.

“Didn’t know you were coming,” I said.

“Uncle Ali,” said Lily, “How do we know whose story is true?”

“Story?” He raised his eyebrows, amused, and gave me a smile, which always—even after twelve years together—takes my breath away. Ali is Lebanese-American, and is the most beautiful man I have ever seen.

“Origin myths,” I told him. “Turtle Island.”

He said to Lily, “Truth can be different from facts, you know? Different stories are true for different people. In my religion, we don’t think the world started with a turtle. We think Allah created it, and did it in seven days.” He paused. “Does that sound like a fact to you?”

She shook her head. “My mom can’t even do a painting in seven days, sometimes,” she said.

“So they’re not facts, our stories, but even if we know they’re not factual, they tell us some truths about who we are,” he said.

“What truths does your story tell?”

He considered the question. Ali always treats Lily like a miniature adult. It works okay more often than not. “Well, it tells me that Allah is good, because the earth is good. It tells me Allah pays attention. It reminds me that he wants me to live in a way that I pay attention, too. And I think that people who tell the story of Turtle Island must be very close to the earth and nature, and the turtle reminds them of that.”

“Okay.” She was probably filing it all away to ask Mirela about later. “Are you going to order a pizza?”

Ali smiled. “I think not,” he said. “I was just passing and saw your Aunt Sydney’s car here so thought I’d stop in to say hello, because I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“It hasn’t been forever, Uncle Ali,” Lily said seriously. “It was last week.”

“Well, it feels like forever,” he said. “What are you ladies doing after lunch?”

“I don’t know about Lily,” I said, “but this lady has work to do.”

“You have to take me home first,” Lily said.

“I know.”

“My mom gave me the key,” Lily said.

“I know. She told me. And you haven’t lost it?”

She made a face. “Of course not, Aunt Sydney. I’m responsible.”

“You certainly are,” I said, smiling. I stood up and began clearing the table. “Want to help me with this? What time’s your mom coming home?”

She finished her soda, sucking noisily on the straw. “When she’s done at the gallery.”

That could be anytime. Mirela isn’t just any artist; even in Provincetown—itself an important art colony, the oldest continuous one in North America—she’s one of the town’s hottest artists. She came to P’town from Bulgaria one summer to work, back when Bulgarian students came here in droves; they still come, but in somewhat smaller numbers; Provincetown is changing. She spent that first summer waiting tables at Joon Bar and The Mews, driving a pedicab, and painting seascapes, mostly of the harbor. The paintings sold, and she stayed on, eventually becoming a US citizen; but over those years her style changed. Now she creates abstract works that sell for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. She’s also marginally psychic, and some of her paintings carry eerie messages that scare the hell out of me.

Lily is, of course, her loudest critic, and often complains that her work doesn’t look like anything in particular; I privately agree with that assessment.

Very privately.

Ali stood up and opened his arms for a hug. “I’ll see you soon, habibi,” he said. It’s an Arabic endearment he reserves for Lily. He generally uses Italian ones with me. He thinks they make him sound sexy.

He’s right.

Lily duly deposited at Mirela’s house in the West End, Ali and I returned to the Race Point Inn, which was doing its usual brisk business. It was late June, the start of the tourist season, when Provincetown’s population makes the switch from three thousand residents in the winter to eighty thousand in the summer. The inn’s open year-round, and we’re generally booked up completely from April to December. I’ve been part of the inn now, one way or another, for over fourteen years, and yet am still absorbing what that entails: people, people, and more people.

Ali disappeared into our residence, which is the penthouse on the top floor of the inn, and I went in search of Wendy, the inn’s manager and—I could swear—magician. She soothed ruffled feathers, dealt with crises, handled difficult people, all the things I’m not terribly good at. We all have our areas of specialty.

Mine is murder.

***

That’s not really true, of course; I haven’t actually killed anybody yet, though I’ve come close a few times. In my fantasies, anyway. No; as Julie Agassi, the head of the Provincetown Police detective unit, tells it, if there’s a dead body anywhere in town, I’m going to be the one to have found it. Or known about it. Or been somehow involved with it. And it’s true that I seem to have a Jessica Fletcher/Miss Marple-level of amateur connection to crime.

It started one summer morning when I went to take an early dip in the Race Point’s pool—at the time, I was employed as the inn’s wedding coordinator—and found the body of my boss floating in the water with me. A thousand times ick, as well as a sorrow I’ve never really gotten over: Barry had been the kindest, gentlest man I’d ever known.

So of course I wanted to be part of bringing his killer to justice.

After that, it felt somehow natural for me to be on the scene of other crimes. Provincetown isn’t very big, and my work brings me into contact with a tremendous number of people, so it’s logical, really, that I’d have more success in figuring things out than would the State Police, dispatched from up-Cape to investigate homicides and not necessarily all that familiar with our little quirks down here.

And quirky doesn’t even begin to describe Provincetown. The town is a vibrant art colony. It’s also a gay-resort destination. And an old fishing village that still retains the remnants of the commercial fleet, along with the Portuguese families who worked it. Once upon a time, one of the whaling capitals of the world. And before that, the summer home of an indigenous population. All that history, all that mix makes for people who most decidedly do not do things by the book. Some outsiders find that disconcerting.

I find it… home.

Wendy was sitting in the empty restaurant drinking coffee and going over the evening’s menu with Martin, the maître d’. “It doesn’t matter; she says we have to take it off,” he was saying.

I pulled up a chair. “Take what off?”

“The salmon en croute,” said Martin. “She is not pleased with the quality of today’s delivery.”

Wendy was shaking her head. “Seriously? I don’t get it. Everybody likes salmon,” she objected. “Even people who don’t like fish, like salmon. She’s got it; for heaven’s sake, what else does she want to do with it?”

Martin made a face; I could only imagine what “she” had said to do with it. She was, of course, Adrienne the diva chef, by whose graces we had earned and kept our Michelin rating. She also had absolutely no care for anybody’s feelings; staff had been known to quit their first night of service because she’d completely terrorized them. My co-owner, Mike, seemed to be the only person who took her tantrums in stride. “It is not a local fish,” Martin was saying, his French accent somehow making the remark more persuasive. “And she has two other piscatory dishes on the menu…”

Wendy snorted. “For heaven’s sake,” she said again, but she said it with resignation. We all knew the truth: what Adrienne the diva chef wanted, Adrienne the diva chef got. “I’m going to have to reprint the menus.”

“Such is the nature of our curious enterprise,” said Martin, shrugging; he knows which battles to fight. He turned to me. “Sydney? Was there something you needed?”

“I wanted to check in with Wendy about the TV crew,” I said. We were being featured on one of the local-things-to-do, early-evening programs out of Boston, which was both a Good Thing—it helps to be known as a Weekend Waypoints destination—and also was going to be disruptive of staff and guests alike.

“Arriving tomorrow morning,” she said, changing gears briskly and seemingly effortlessly. “Mike wants you to do the interview, did he tell you?”

“He did.” Mike and I had become co-owners of the inn when its former owner gave up Provincetown for Amsterdam and his new love. Mike had been the manager, so he slipped easily into the role of keeping on top of the practical side of things, whereas once I gave up coordinating weddings, I tended more toward the public-relations side of ownership, attended business guild meetings, helped organize events, went off-Cape to conferences… and, apparently, did interviews for Boston television stations.

I also valued Wendy’s impressive organizational skills. “Where do you suggest it will disrupt people the least? The interview, I mean? The part I’m doing?”

“You’re doing the whole part,” she corrected me. “You’re going to have to stick with them, and take the producers to lunch here, I have a table for you at one o’clock.” She pulled out her smartphone and started scrolling. “Juliet Mills and Bruce Peterson,” she read. “And rooms thirty-four and eighteen will be empty and prepared for the cameras, but you have to be out of eighteen by lunchtime because we have an early arrival for it.”

I raised my eyebrows ever so slightly. “Thirty-four? Do you think that’s a good idea? You know they’ll have done their homework.” I could still hear Lily’s voice saying she knew how to do research; there was absolutely no way television producers didn’t.

It wasn’t that thirty-four is a bad room—it’s actually quite nice, with antique furnishings and a window overlooking the largest of our patios, the one with the arbor. It had been two years since Ali and I had stood on that patio exchanging wedding vows when we were interrupted by a man’s body falling very nearly on top of us.

From room thirty-four.

“They requested it,” said Wendy. “It adds a little pizzazz, knowing a murder happened here.”

Two murders, in fact, if you counted the body in the pool years before that. My instinct was to downplay that particular facet of the Race Point’s claims to fame. But Wendy leaned into it, and her decision had proved successful. There was even talk, sometimes, of a possible haunting. And people liked that. “Your call,” I said, making a face.

“I’ve put together a schedule,” Wendy went on, her voice brisk. Potential ghosts weren’t playing into her agenda—for the day, at least. “They’ll spend the morning shooting the inn, then after lunch they’ll go down Commercial Street, do shots of the town. They call it B-roll. Back here for a wrap-up before dinner service starts. Nine of them in all: producers, director, the on-air talent, and cameras and sound.”

“Okay.” I knew better than to argue: Wendy knew what she was doing. Nothing could go wrong.

Which just goes to show how little I understand about fate, or life, or anything.

***

Excerpt from Trafficking in Murder by Jeannette de Beauvoir. Copyright 2026 by Jeannette de Beauvoir. Reproduced with permission from Jeannette de Beauvoir. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will.
—Dylan

‘Hi love, you just dropped your glove.’

When she turned to face him, he was amazed. He remained totally in shock to the extent he became a blabbering idiot.

‘Just now as it fell from your coat pocket…’ he continued, ‘I caught it before it hit the wet ground… Honestly it didn’t get wet. I mean it’s a little wet, but only from the rain and not the pavement…agh…’ and mid-sentence he reluctantly turned and chased after his two mates.

She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever set his eyes on during his seventeen years on this earth. When she’d passed him a few life-changing seconds beforehand, she was walking, arms interlinked in the midst of two friends with her head bowed to the pavement. Consequently, he’d missed her green eyes, hidden by her long black hair, and he’d missed her quiet demeanour, but, most of all, he’d also missed the chance to make a connection.

He insisted his two mates, Brendan and Lefty, continue walking around the streets of Portrush with him until darkness fell ninety minutes later. He was working on the theory they’d bump into the three girls again. They’d discovered, to his cost, the only thing more difficult than finding someone in Portrush in the peak holiday season was finding someone on the deserted streets of Portrush during the off-peak season, when Ulster’s number one tourist centre reverted to its more comfortable status of winter ghost town, aka Ghostrush.

Thomas Barry—Tommy to his acquaintances, Tom to his good friends—minus his two mates was back on the streets the following morning, just before eight o’clock. He walked the short distance from his parents’ house in the sedate Antrim Gardens to the nearly (but not quite) refurbished railway station in Eglinton Street, passing the moth-balled Barry’s (historic) Amusement Arcade on the way. It was a journey just like he’d done most days of his life. Most other days of his life. though, he’d just taken Barry’s (no relation) and every other local landmark, for granted. That Sunday morning in October 1976 though he’d studied every nook and cranny around the streets of the Port as if his life depended on it.

He felt it did.

When his friends met up with him just before lunch time, he admitted to them he’d already had tea and toast in Portrush’s Holiday Hostel, with its ultra-colourful rooms; the once elegant Adelphi Hoteland The Atlantic Hotel, with its spectacular views, in the vain hope the three girls were out-of-towners. The other hotels and guest houses were all closed for the winter, he claimed. Still, he’d tried them all, “just in case, you understand.” He also, for one who’d always gone to great trouble to keep the majority of his feelings inarticulately to himself, articulately explained he felt for the sake of his well-being, if not his life, he needed to find this girl. He also admitted that, not only did he not know what he was going to say to her when, and if, he met her, but if such an accidental, on purpose, meet happened he’d be so tongue-tied again, he might even need to walk on past her. He just knew he really needed to find her. He told them he’d been awake all-night thinking about her. Lefty put him out of his misery by offering to take him to some of the out-of-town hotels. The two of them hopped on Lefty’s trusted red Vespa 125 scooter and headed off out past Kelly’s trailer park and bar and on to Castle Rock, Portstewart, Portballintrae and even Bushmills.

They returned just over an hour later with the Vespa’s petrol tank empty and their four arms all the one length.

Thomas Barry admitted to his two best friends he’d never felt so convinced about anything before in his life. A real-life girl had never ever had such an effect on him before. Isabella Adjani on the silver screen yes, but a real live human, certainly not. He most certainly accepted the fact he was never ever going to meet the long-haired, green-eyed girl again in his life.

He admitted how weird this feeling was to him.

Nonetheless he continued his search.

He thought of all the things he could have done, should have done. Perhaps all of them were things capable of scaring her off for life. But what did it matter now? He’d most certainly lost her for life.

The lads wanted to go to the Old Harbour Bar. Even with the new glitzy restaurant extension, accessed by a half a flight of wooden stairs, it was still the cosiest bar in the winter and their favourite watering hole. He declined, suggesting he might join them later. Once again, he took to the streets of Portrush. The same familiar streets he had taken for granted all his life, but which now took on major importance due to the fact they may be keeping him from finding the green-eyed girl. He tried chastising himself for feeling sorry for himself. It didn’t work. How could it possibly work when someone, something, a God even, if such a spirit existed, had allowed him to experience this special creature and then not equip him properly about how to approach her? He chastised himself further for not considering what he’d say to her if, or when, he met her. He’d already let himself down once by blabbering away when he had the perfect excuse to greet her. Equally he felt if he had something rehearsed it would have sounded too false, stifled, insincere and a chat up line. He kicked himself over his rap about her glove being wet not because he had let it fall on the wet pavement but because it had gotten damp in the rain.

He’d never been one for the chat up lines. They’d left those to Lefty. Funny enough this approach hadn’t worked out for their lead wingman either. Thomas Barry had often wondered if they’d become mates, “blood brothers” just so they could hang out together and look for girls. Anyway, they had launched their little gang, the BLTs. They even had their own unique motto: May the Sauce be With You. It was funny at the time. They’d picked it over a meal together in Morelli’s as they simultaneously chased the food-saving flavouring known as HP. They’d also debated using: Life is a Beach and Then the Tide Goes Out,. Considering their endgame objective, they had unanimously voted against this option on the grounds it was too negative. As he wandered around the deserted streets, now it had gotten down to the nitty-gritty, he wasn’t so sure about their motto either, or even about their gang in the first place. Lefty was always complaining three wasn’t a good number to hang out in. If they met two girls and got through the even more complicated task of chatting them up, then the girls would surely feel sorry for the additional boy they would have to exclude due to the mathematical impossibilities. He reckoned maybe they could possibly have made the problematic maths work down in the more liberal Belfast. In the meantime, they had agreed they would figure out such a scenario as and when it arose. Lefty had claimed the girls would probably make their preference known and they, the boys, would just have to deal with it. They’d been happy to leave the tactics to Lefty. Even though Lefty’s tactics had, so far, been 100% unsuccessful, they still left him in charge. The alternate didn’t bear thinking about.

Tommy wondered if it would be any easier if, and when, one of them found a girlfriend and peeled off their gang as it were. He wondered who’d be the first to find a girl. He thought if you were a betting man and you followed the odds, then Lefty should be the first to find a girl. But then what would they do? They’d surely be lost without the tactics man. Or would they?

‘At least the rain has stopped,’ he said aloud, as he rounded the corner of the forsaken Mark Street Lane and into the desolate Atlantic Avenue.

‘Hi Love,’ he thought he heard a ghostly breathy voice say, not much above a whisper, ‘you haven’t found another glove, have you?’

There she was, there right in front of him on what would now become the hallowed, Atlantic Avenue. His green-eyed girl’s green eyes were smiling straight at him.

He was so intent on finding her he pretty much nearly walked straight into her. He knew if she hadn’t spoken first, he would have walked past her. Lucky enough before he’d a chance to figure out what he was going to say she spoke again.

‘What am I like?’ she started, ‘I’m forever losing a glove, thankfully never both at the same time, mind you, always just the one at a time. The one you picked up for me I…’

‘I’ve been looking for you all day,’ he admitted, his voice sounding a lot calmer than he felt.

‘Mmmm,’ she replied, studying his face and sounding like she knew, and accepted, such an admission wasn’t as weird as he feared, ‘you’d look good with a moustache.’

Of all the things he’d imagined her to reply, and most of them also included her rushing off as quickly as her shapely legs would carry her, this was not even in the top 1000. It wasn’t as though he had actually come up with more than three possible replies.

Before he knew it, they were involved in a natural freewheeling conversation.

She seemed inclined to linger rather than to walk away.

At a very brief lull in the conversation, they both silently acknowledged they didn’t want the conversation to be stifled, so they spurted out their next questions simultaneously.

‘Do you live here?’ Tommy asked.

‘Who were you talking to as you walked around the corner?’ she asked over the top of his question.

‘No, I’m at the University of Ulster in Coleraine and one of my course mates invited me and another friend over to her parents’ house for the weekend. Her parents own a wee guest house over by the West Strand,’ she said in response to his question.

‘I was talking to myself,’ he admitted, ‘what’s your friend’s name?’

‘Gilly Hutchinson.’

‘Oh,’ he said, without even meaning to.

‘You know her?’

‘Well I know of her,’ he replied, ‘I know her sister.’

‘Which one?

‘Gilly would have been a few years ahead of me,’ Tommy replied.

‘Right,’ she replied, without allowing him to finish, ‘so you’d know the youngest, Emmi Mae.’

‘Yeah we were really good friends when we were…oh 13 ish and then she outgrew me.’

‘Ah yes, it happens at 13 or even 13-ish.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he offered more to himself, ‘so was that Gilly the blonde-haired girl with you yesterday?’

‘No, Gilly was swotting, you saw the eldest sister, Adele, who’s just great craic altogether.’

‘Okay, figures, I don’t know her at all,’ he replied.

He looked at his green-eyed girl out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t see her as well as he’d seen her yesterday when they’d met face to face. She still looked stunning even though her long dark hair covered the side of her face. He couldn’t see those amazing green eyes though. On the upside what he’d missed yesterday was her personal scents. She smelt of a blend of soap, shampoo, mixed with little hints of a heather based perfume. The combination was totally intoxicating. ‘I’m Tommy,’ he offered, extending his hand, and knowing it was an excuse to steal another glimpse of her stunning emerald eyes, ‘Tom Barry.’

‘I know,’ she said, offering her own hand in return.

‘You know?’ he said, surprised while noticing two of her top teeth protruded a wee bit to the extent it looked like her top lip was going to have trouble covering them.

‘Yes, Adele told me,’ she said, as she smiled, ‘she also said you weren’t part of the other Portrush Barry family.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ he said, still holding her soft skinned hand and shaking it gently, determined to never let it go again if he could get away with it. ‘’Fraid it also means I’ll not be able to get you free rides on the dodgems.’

‘I’d be more of a Barry’s Big Dipper kind of girl, anyway.’

‘Ditto on the Big Dipper, although I can’t pull any strings there either,’ he offered regretfully, while thinking he didn’t see her as being a Big Dipper kind of girl. All that screaming seems so alien to one so reserved and private. ‘I could get you a pony ride on the beach though if you wanted?’

‘Accepted,’ she replied, seeming content to leave her hand where it was, she leaned towards him, her nostrils wriggling the more they bridged the gap to his ear, ‘but not being part of the amusements also means you won’t smell of petrol and grease and candyfloss.’

‘Or Daulse and Yellowman,’ he added, attempting to complete her list and praying it was a compliment, ‘oh look…’ he continued and pointed with his free hand to the cuff of her red duffle coat, ‘there’s your missing glove, stuck up the sleeve of your coat.’

Sadly, for Tommy, this gave her an excuse to break away from him.

‘I’m Isabella,’ she said, retrieving her glove, ‘Isabella Scott and the pleasure to meet you on this wintery weekend, is all mine. That’s twice you saved me, Tommy, which means I’ll never forget you.’

And that, was how Tommy Barry and Isabella Scott first met.

Neither Isabella, her two friends, Gilly Hutchinson and Jane Murray nor Tommy Barry’s two friends, Lefty Kelly and Brendan ‘Brendy’ McCusker, would ever forget Tommy Barry. This fact was even more definite now that forty-three years later (bar three months) on Wednesday July 17th, 2019, the very same Tommy Barry died a very unnatural death.

***

Excerpt from Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove by Paul Charles. Copyright 2026 by Paul Charles. Reproduced with permission from Paul Charles. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The car bumped hard, the undercarriage hitting the edge of the shoulder, as it careened off the Garden State Parkway, heading for a stand of trees. The bump woke me up, and I jammed on the brakes and fought the steering wheel, cutting it hard left, but it was too late. The car fishtailed as the front smashed into a tree, the rear swinging right as the brakes took hold and crashing into another tree. I was flung forward, my hands coming off the wheel and banging against the console.

My hands were cut and bleeding as I sat staring at the road, the car twisted at a forty-five-degree angle. Pain throbbed from my right temple, and I realized I must have hit the windshield or the roof. A heaviness pressed down inside my head above my eyes, and I felt an urge to close them and go to sleep.

I forced myself to stay awake and get out of the car. I knew I was still technically drunk, but the crash had pumped enough adrenaline into my veins that I was hyper-aware, despite the likely concussion. I tried to open the trunk, but it was stuck shut, the right fender crunched in and bent on the top where it met the hatch.

A car passed going north on the other side of the Parkway. I looked back up the south-bound lane and saw no traffic. I stepped onto the road and half-jogged across, stepping over the median and across the north-bound lane. I glanced back at the car, slanted cock-eyed in the grass just past the Exit 6 sign for North Wildwood, then hurried through the grassy stretch alongside the road and into the woods that bordered it.

My only thought now was to avoid getting a DUI. I could deal with the car later. What a disaster. I had just bought the damn thing yesterday afternoon from a guy in Buena with a badly running nose and a burning desire to take my cash and go meet someone to make him well. That’s what I got for taking a lead on a cheap car from a guy holding up the end of the bar at a beer-and-a-shot place down the street from my house. I could have asked Lou to hook me up, but the price was right, and I just wanted something to get me through the summer. So I hitched a ride to Buena from a buddy who was headed to Margate, where I met Drew, the guy with the dripping nose. Drew had that pressing business to attend to, so he was fine with giving me the uncompleted paperwork.

Drew said, “Just see Mitch at the title place here next week, he’ll handle it.”

I trudged through the patch of woods, distancing myself from the Parkway. I came to a two-lane road and ran across that into deeper woods on the other side. I was about ready to just sleep under a tree there, when through a gap in the branches I saw an open field.

I pushed forward to the perimeter of the woods and stopped, trying to make out where I was. If it was somebody’s back yard, I would have to be careful. But there were no lights, just a dark field spreading out before me. I looked to my left and saw a brighter patch on the ground and a hundred yards beyond that a low building, maybe a garage?

I walked through tall grass to shorter grass, and as I got closer to the bright patch, I realized what it was: a sand trap.

I was on a fairway of Wildwood Country Club, the home course of my friend Lou Scolletta, whose house I was supposed to have been at four hours ago. There was probably a caddie shack I could hide out in, but I opted for a makeshift bed in the grass of a hollow a few fairways over. I lay down and, in the brief period before I passed out, wondered if this was the best way to prepare for the first day on my new job.

* * *

There was no way I wanted a full-time job working for Lou. I knew just enough about Lou to know not knowing anything more was the prudent path. The fact that he had just fired the prior manager for dipping in the till did not make the opportunity more appealing.

But there was a crazy part of me that thought running a place—a restaurant, not McNabb’s Tavern, the decrepit neighborhood tappie in Southwest Philly where until last year I humped kegs, mopped up fluids, breathed a lot of smoke and told myself I was the “manager”—might be something I could do. Because I was nowhere right now. No degree, no trade—just fifteen years of bartending that had ended when the last McNabb standing decided—wisely—that this was no way to make a living. The new owners didn’t need a mug like me in the fern bar that McNabb’s was to become.

I knew The Seabreeze, the quintessential Jersey Shore restaurant. When Lou bought it six years ago, I helped out a few weekends bartending when some of the corner boys he had hired just disappeared on him. It wasn’t hard finding someone to cover for me at McNabb’s. Our weekends were slower in the summer anyway, with a lot of folks going to the shore.

Lou and I hung out more back then. He bought the place in 1977 when I was thirty and Lou maybe thirty-seven. It was sort of a vanity project for him; his main business was a Cadillac dealership in South Philly. The following summer, he showed up at my bar with his son Davy—guess the kid was sixteen. He wanted Davy to get a summer job. Could we take him on, washing dishes, whatever? I wondered why he didn’t hire him at the dealership, but I guess he wanted him to work for someone else.

So I hired him, and he was okay, typical teenager, hardly said a word. There really wasn’t that much to do—we had a kitchen and did some sandwiches, but it wasn’t much to keep a dishwasher busy.

I guess that was the first favor I did for Lou. And I did owe him big, seeing as how his dad got me out of the draft back in 1967. Plus, Lou got me my first restaurant job, which was really a pretty good gig at a nice South Philly restaurant. But with Lou, you never felt like he was looking for payback. He just came off as a great guy, not like he was some connected dude that you had to say yes to. I’m sure he sold a lot of cars seeming like a great guy.

I used to give Davy a ride home sometimes, which often led to Concetta—Lou’s wife—asking me in to eat. There was always food, loads of food. She’d give me a plate of pasta, red wine out of a jug—might be ten o’clock in the evening, but so what? Then Lou would show up, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash that I was there. Then he had me down to a little mom-and-pop restaurant near his dealership for dinner, and I met some of his friends. They were mostly older and had gone to Bishop Neumann or Southern, but a few knew guys from Kingsessing, my old neighborhood in Southwest Philly.

I thought about that pasta and how a mick like me was going to run a real restaurant, and, as I passed out in the wet grass at 3:30 AM, whether Davy was still having the same nose-dripping problems as Drew from Buena, a path I saw him starting down two and a half years ago.

* * *

The sound of a mower woke me up. The guy running it looked like he had seen worse. He pointed me to the caddy shack and gave me some coins for the payphone. Thank God Lou picked up, but then that’s Lou, he’s not surprised if some fuckup calls him at dawn. I washed up as best I could with cold water and no soap in the filthy sink in the shack’s bathroom, then waited outside the locker room, not wanting to meet up with anyone, until Lou arrived.

What a night. Blitzed out of my mind, drinking stingers like I was twenty in Somers Point, dancing with those crazy chicks, trying to teach me to moonwalk like Michael Jackson on that Motown show a couple of months ago. It was the Friday after a Monday Fourth of July, and it felt like the bar itself was stumbling under the strain of a week-long bender.

I had just stopped in for something to eat, then met these girls, three of them, late teens, which led to my dancing lesson. As it got late and the stingers took their toll, I figured maybe I’d just crash in the back seat for a couple of hours, then get breakfast somewhere, rather than roll in drunk at four in the morning and freak out Concetta.

Then two of the girls disappeared and the last one, Sharon, became glued to a chair at my table—that is, her butt was glued to the chair, but her face ended up stuck to the table itself, her long brown hair straggling out into the sticky remains of many ungodly drinks. At closing time, I struggled her to her feet and managed to get her to moan out where she was staying in Sea Isle City, a couple of towns south. After she vomited in the parking lot, I got her into the back seat and drove as carefully as I could, taking Route 9 to avoid the faster traffic.

I got the girl out of the car at her shabby rental duplex, leaving her sprawled on a chaise lounge in the screened porch. I banged on the door until one of her roommates appeared in a long t-shirt. We got her into bed and I talked the roommate through how to make sure Sharon didn’t choke on her own vomit.

I sat in my car, worrying about the girl. I was old enough to be her father, but being plastered in a Somers Point bar at closing time didn’t exactly qualify me to be in loco parentis. I was just a more experienced wastrel, a thirty-six-year-old failed bartender who would have been a disappointment to someone, if there was anyone left to fill that role.

When I left the girl’s rental, I figured it wasn’t much farther to Wildwood, and what the hell, why not take the Parkway? But of course, that’s what impaired judgment is all about. So fatigue and drunkenness once more exacted their toll on a stupid Irishman, and here I was creeping around at dawn like an escaped convict.

***

Excerpt from Wildwood Exit by Joel E. Turner. Copyright 2025 by Joel E. Turner. Reproduced with permission from Joel E. Turner. All rights reserved.

Prologue

THE DRIVE TO the dingy bar outside of the city had been rough when the directions led him down a series of dirt roads before reaching what managed to loosely be called civilization. The bell above the door chimed a dull sound, barely registering his presence. He shook his rain-soaked umbrella, drawing a few curious glances his way before the three men at the bar decided their cold beer and stale peanuts were more interesting than him.

The bartender, a man in his late fifties with a marine tattoo on a bicep, asked him if he wanted anything. Though kind, if the bartender had offered him a bottle of the Alps’ finest water, he wouldn’t accept—not in a place like this—but he was trying to blend in.

“Whatever is on tap,” he said, and found a table in a back corner.

Although he had no intention of staying longer than necessary, the location offered him anonymity. The front door, with its surprisingly clean window, opened and brought with it a strong wind and his associate. The new arrival scanned the room, nodded at the others, and crossed the dark bar.

“You’re late.”

“I’m here now. You have something for me, Hewitt?”

He’d made a mistake giving the man a name, even if it wouldn’t lead back to him. They’d agreed not to use names, not here, not ever. He removed a black, zippered deposit bag from the inside pocket of his rain slicker and slid it across the table.

The man across from him chuckled and unzipped the bag.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hewitt asked, his whisper a low hiss. He quieted when the bartender set a beer in front of him.

His associate raised an eyebrow and continued to wear his smile. “You’ve seen too many movies.” He closed the bag and leaned forward. “Do you honestly think anyone here cares who you are or what you’re doing? At least you dressed for the occasion—kind of.”

Hewitt stared at the man across from him, confident that despite his off-balanced behavior at times, he’d get the job done. History had proven he was capable, if not entirely trustworthy, and willing to do anything—for a price.

“You’re forgetting something,” he said.

Hewitt hated this man. “It’s in the bag.”

Another chuckle. “In the bag, I like that.” He pulled the colored photograph from the deposit bag and studied the image. “How’d you find me?”

“Does it matter?”

“I like to know what I’m getting into.”

Hewitt studied him, unsure now of his idea but knowing he had to move forward. “All you need to know is I can make your other . . . inconvenience go away.”

“And what might that be?”

Hewitt pulled a folded sheet of paper from his inside breast pocket and slid it across the table.

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“You know who I work for?” Hewitt asked.

“I checked it out.”

“Then you know I can do what I say,” Hewitt said, growing impatient. “Will it be a problem?”

“No, no problem.” Instead of returning the picture to the bag, he slipped it into the pocket of his dark, denim shirt. “You going to drink this?” he asked before he lifted Hewitt’s beer and drank deeply.

From Chapter One

JORDAN EASED THE rented SUV into the graveled parking lot of the lakeside lodge. Nestled in the thick pine forest surrounding Moosehead Lake, the Highlands Lodge reminded him of the fishing camp his family frequented in Alaska.

He stepped out and walked around to the back of the vehicle, breathing in the fresh northern air. Though nothing like his hometown of Stewart Crossing, which was tucked away on a remote Alaskan bay, Moose Creek, Maine, was a pleasant escape from the spring heat of North Carolina, where he operated the main branch of Eagle Wilderness Journeys.

The parking lot was empty, but he heard voices coming from the back of the lodge, laughter carrying through the trees and echoing over the water. Adam, his college roommate and the reason Jordan trekked up north, ambled across the gravel and pulled Jordan into a big hug. Considering Adam stood four inches shorter than Jordan and weighed thirty pounds less, it wasn’t easy.

“Dang, it’s good to see you.”

Jordan returned the amiable smile. “You look happy.”

“Wait till you meet her.” Adam opened the back of the SUV and lifted the duffel out before Jordan objected. “You’re going to love her. I mean, whoever thought I’d ever be monogamous.”

Jordan laughed, closed the back door, and followed Adam to the lodge. “If I recall, you didn’t know the meaning of the word throughout our senior year.”

“Well, yeah, but could you blame me?” Adam led him around the corner of the lodge and stopped. “Wait, there she is.”

Adam had described her perfectly. Girl-next-door pretty and fresh off the cheerleading squad, Grace was only a year younger than his friend. Her pale, blond curls bounced as she walked on long legs across the lawn. “She’s something all right. I wouldn’t have expected—”

It wasn’t often when life’s unexpected moments stunned Jordan into silence or immobilized him, but none stopped his breath quite like his first glimpse of the woman standing next to Adam’s fiancée.

“Who is she?”

“It’s Grace, man, who do you think . . . Ah.” Adam nudged Jordan’s ribs with his elbow and laughed. “That’s Heather, Grace’s maid of honor.”

Jordan didn’t want to use the word “dumbstruck,” but at the moment, he couldn’t formulate another. His sister would have called him “twitterpated” and normally he would put her in a headlock until she cried “mercy” and take it back, but it had been a long time since she’d had cause to tease him about a girl.

“Hey, buddy, close your mouth before you drool.”

Jordan wiped his mouth before he realized Adam was messing with him. “Don’t forget, I can still kick your golf-playing butt from here to next Tuesday.”

“Why don’t I introduce you instead, and then you can owe me one.”

***

Excerpt from Shadow of Betrayal by Blaire Morgan. Copyright 2026 by Blaire Morgan. Reproduced with permission from Blaire Morgan. All rights reserved.

ONE

Over the Water

Grief is a scab that I can’t stop picking at, no matter how hard I try. It pokes at me now as I sit in my truck on the deserted ferry dock, surrounded by dense morning fog and waiting for the boat to take me across an expanse of dark water to a house rumored to be cursed.

My fingers trace a photograph taped to my dashboard. My hand trembles, likely from an empty stomach or sleeplessness, as both are constant companions. But I outline the beloved face, forever frozen, like a precious object in amber. Lost to me in the real world, calling to me from the next.

The ferry slides into the dock in front of me with a bump against the pilings. A lone figure moves across the empty deck, while an old, grizzled seaman stays inside the tiny wheelhouse. One captain and one first mate.

Tying the ferry off with ropes thicker than my arm, the mate’s actions are practiced and steady. He lowers a ramp and waves me forward. Ever so slowly, I roll across the water, fighting against holding my breath—the superstition I’ve clung to my entire life every time I cross a bridge. The thirty-minute sail to Salish Island, and tiny Monk’s Rock where my new job awaits, won’t allow me the indulgence, so I might as well continue to breathe despite my need to cling to anything, even a silly belief, to keep me safe.

After parking the truck as the mate directs, I wait as he shoves bright orange chock blocks around all four wheels, as if, without a barrier, my vehicle might drive itself into the sea.

I open my door a crack; our eyes meet. “Can I get out?”

“Of course.”

The first mate is rugged, with an air of confidence like he’d be good in a crisis. Smooth skin on his cheeks. Bright, inquisitive eyes. Broad shoulders visible under the bulky uniform of dark green waterproof overalls and a yellow slicker.

He holds out his hand as I step out. “Careful. Parts of the deck can be slippery when it’s this wet.”

Electricity flies between our fingers, and I pull away as if he poses a threat. I don’t want to feel desire. Intimacy is dangerous. But what does it mean that I’m looking at men again?

He gives me an odd look. “We’ll be underway in a few minutes.” He walks back to the ramp, where two men unload a battered white cargo van. The three of them quickly stack boxes to one side, lashing them in place. No doubt provisions for an island that’s home to five hundred hearty souls—and me. At least for the time it takes to complete the finish carpentry in one enormous house.

I’d once been a very good carpenter. Before my life exploded into hospitals and medical visits, overwhelming helplessness and all the endless paperwork connected to dying. Since then, I’ve done a poor job of putting myself back together. The rough pieces of grownup life refusing to fit a new pattern now that I’m alone.

My mentor Bill Thomlinson had started this project less than a week ago but fell and broke his leg in multiple places. After he came through the surgery, metal pins in place, he convinced the homeowner to take a chance on me.

“You need this,” he said to me over the phone, his voice surprisingly strong for someone coming out of anesthesia. “I’m done watching you flail. This job can save you. Don’t let me down.”

Now I stand on the deck of a private ferry while the engines roar out a steady vibration under my feet, and wonder if I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Crossing to the rail, I pin my eyes where the horizon must lie out beyond the mist. Clouds above and waves below. Indistinguishable from each other because of the heavy air, thick like smoke. My stomach lurches at the thought of everything that swims underneath my feet and the unknown depth of the sea.

Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . focus on the future. Focus on the work.

All I know about the job ahead of me is that the original carpenter vanished, forcing the owner, Cameron Lang, to bring in someone else, but then Bill ended up with pins in his leg. Given that I haven’t slept in so long that I shouldn’t be trusted with power tools, I hope that whatever the curse is, it doesn’t come in threes.

When I feel like I’m losing my mind, it helps to ground myself with something physical, so I grip the hard, cold rail in my hands. No matter how much ending my life is a viable choice, some small part of me refuses to let death win again.

The fog brightens, and we cross a physical line in space, plunging into a blue so pure it hurts my eyes. I gasp and grip even tighter as the sky separates from the water, which now spreads out below me in an endless black void.

“Not quite got your sea legs?” The first mate watches me with barely disguised curiosity.

Salt spray traces tears down my cheeks. I must look like I’m crying. “I didn’t expect to come out of the fog so abruptly.”

“It does that sometimes. Now you see it, now you don’t. No matter how often we sail through a bank, it always feels like magic.”

“I can imagine.”

He lingers nearby. Maybe there’s little to do once the ferry is underway. Although small talk is beyond my ability, part of me longs to hear his voice again, even if I say things that sound insane.

The temperature drops as we head further out to sea.

We’re soon dodging between uninhabited land masses. “Some of these islands are so low they disappear in high tide.” He gestures to the slopes of land. Rocky outcroppings just under the surface. Dangerous, like unexploded mines in the sand.

Panic rises. The water below us taunts me—my troubles will be over if I simply fall into a watery grave. The voice becomes louder and more insistent that I should do something I can’t take back. To keep my mind off the words in my head, my eyes search for the defiant piece of US rock thrusting out of Canadian waters. If I can make it back to dry land, I can get through another day.

“That’s what you’re looking for.” The first mate’s breath tickles my ear as he comes closer, speaking over the hum of the engines, the slap of water on the hull, and the cry of seagulls. My gaze follows his arm to the far-off outline of Salish Island, where Monk’s Rock perches off the northern-most end, tethered to each other by the narrowest of bridges.

“Take this.” He presses a business card into my hand. “Just in case.” Under his name is a single word, handyman, and a phone number.

“Adrian Han?” I look up, his eyes capturing mine. “I thought you were the first mate.”

“I’m a lot of things.” His words are casual, but something reflects in his expression, an emotion I can’t put my finger on.

“You might realize at some point there’s a project you need help with. Nothing against your skills. Everyone needs another set of hands once in a while.”

“I have a helper.”

“Chuck, yeah. I’ve worked with him before.” His tone is carefully neutral.

My new boss made the arrangements for Chuck to help me with anything that requires two people. Am I going to regret his choice?

“How do you know why I’m here?”

Adrian’s carefree expression returns. “Emily Grace Turner. Carpenter. Here to finish the End of the World.”

It’s a jolt that he knows anything about me when I’ve worked so hard to become invisible. He reads me again, and his tone turns reassuring. “It’s a small town—people talk.” He gestures toward the wood rack that fits over my camper shell and the bumper sticker: Proud Member of the Carpenter’s Union. “Plus, your name was on your ferry registration.”

I chuckle for thinking his words are sinister until a darker emotion, one that looks like fear, crosses his face. “That house—” His lips purse as if he holds something back. “Just call if you need help. Anytime.”

The island takes clearer shape, and Adrian returns to the wheelhouse, his absence palpable, as if a physical hole remains in the air after he’s gone.

He’s taken his fear with him, except for the small part he’s left behind with me.

***

Excerpt from The Haunting of Emily Grace by Elena Taylor. Copyright 2025 by Elena Taylor. Reproduced with permission from Elena Taylor. All rights reserved.