Bøger af Richard Wolkomir

Cooper North is back as Allen County prosecutor, called out of retirement-a wave of bizarre crimes has everyone on edge. This town's in the Green Mountains, a thousand miles north of the subtropics-yet, an alligator waddles along Main Street, scaring shoppers. Simultaneously, for no obvious reason, inept thieves steal sugar-maple logs. Then it gets serious. Sadists attack the town's pets. Meanwhile, a maple-syrup entrepreneur is murdered-someone hid yellow-jacket wasps in his sleeves. His venom allergies were widely known, so everyone in his company is a suspect. Then, knife-wielding psychopaths, costumed as Ninjas, go on a killing rampage. Cooper suspects they target people who matter to her, even a small boy. She wonders: is it all connected? Suddenly, she faces great danger, her chances of surviving miniscule. She's graying, tall, almost gaunt. She walks with a cane. She's a recovering scotch addict. Yet, her penetrating gray eyes see deep. On the hunt, she's relentless. As she and her police colleagues follow the killers' zigzagging trails, this story twists, then keeps twisting. Finally, it twists hard. You won't guess the ending.

He's just a boy-he doesn't tell us his name, only that he's lame-but he's first to see the witches approach. They come across the frozen steppe, astride dire wolves, herding saber-toothed cats. Afterwards, the boy's no longer just a boy. And the town's no longer what it was. That's the first story of fifteen. How about the alien visitor to a little town in New Hampshire, who gets sloshed on Diet Pepsi? These stories cover the emotional map. However, they have this in common: from a Pleistocene western to a noir private-eye farce, involving trolls and a petulant homunculus, they transport you out of this world, and out of this time. If you like stepping away from the ordinary, these stories take you where you want to go.

Here are fifteen dispatches from imagination's hinterlands. Wand-slingers cast death spells, at the OK Corral. An alien appears on Main Street, in a barber's chair. Atlanteans, up from an abandoned Manhattan subway tunnel, confront an ace pickpocket. A Florida swamp wizard takes water-moccasin form. As one reader, in the United Kingdom, put it: "Quirky and engaging - a fantastic storyteller with a brilliant imagination. I was sorry to finish the book. Well worth your time." Sure, and speaking of time, in the far future, when the technology is biological, and cities are made of living cells....