Howard Owen

No one thought Jack Stone of Speakeasy, Virginia, was the kind of man who would try to solve his problems with a .38. But here he is, on a train to New York, armed and dangerously determined that somebody is going to read his damn novel. Jack once had dreams of bigger things, but here he is, a long-distance trucker with a shaky home life and one last chance to be special. All that the New York editor needs is a little persuasion.

A visionary who dreams about eating kindling wood called "fat lightning" and sees Christ on the Cross in his barn forms an unlikely league with his nephew's frustrated wife in a small Southern town.

Before he let his life fall apart, James "Neil" Beauchamp was special. He lived and flourished in the world of privilege, adored and accommodated. Then, before he truly learned to appreciate it, the one talent that lifted him from a small life in a small town was gone. The only thing worse than spending your life earthbound, Neil would learn, is landing hard and knowing you'll never fly again.   Born in Penns Castle, in the castle itself, he was...

A familiar name piques Willie Black's interest on a slow news day: Scuffletown Park. He and the first of his four wives lived next to the pocket park when they were young and still on speaking terms. Now, Scuffletown is the site of a crime scene, one that doesn't fit the usual modus operandi for Richmond. For one thing, there's plenty of blood but no body. Also, it seems that a knife was involved-a rarity in Willie's gun-happy city. And Scuffletown...

Richmond is in a panic. For the fourth time in eighteen months, a young girl or woman has been brutalized and murdered. This time the body of a fourteen-year-old girl is found in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom train station. On her ankle is the same perversely cartoonish tattoo that has led the cops and newspapers to dub the perpetrator the Tweety Bird killer. When Willie Black finds out that the night security guy at the station was lured away from his...

Willie Black is a newspaper reporter who has squandered a lot of things in his life-his liver, his lungs, a couple of former wives, and a floundering daughter can all attest to his abuse. He's lucky to be employed, having managed to drink and smart-talk his way out of a nice, cushy job covering-and partying with-the politicians down at the capitol. Now he's back on the night cops beat, right where he started when he came to work for the Richmond paper...

Les Hacker doesn't seem to have an enemy in the world other than whoever tried to kill him with a high-powered rifle while he was sitting on a park bench six floors below Willie Black's living room window. Les is the closest thing Willie has had to a father figure in a checkered life of drinking, divorces, and journalism. Now, with Les clinging to life, Willie decides to take a short sabbatical and do a story about his surrogate dad and the last minor-league...