Orangeberry Book of the Day – Chasing the Lost by Bob Mayer

Chapter Two

“What the hell is going on?” Chase demanded as he checked Chelsea once more. The bandage and seal were working; bleeding and losing air through the wound was stopped. That was good. Still no sign of an exit wound. That was bad.

“They kidnapped Cole,” Sarah said once more. She had her arms wrapped around her body, shaking. “I couldn’t stop them.”

“Who kidnapped him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Call the cops,” Chase ordered. On Sarah’s face, he could see shock setting in.

“They’ve got Cole.” She said it as if she didn’t believe it. She blinked. “We need to get your dog to a vet.”

Chase looked up from checking Chelsea’s wound and spoke distinctly, combat mode when trying to get through to someone in shock. “Call. Nine. One. One.”

She shook her head slowly. “We can’t go to the police, and we especially can’t go to Spanish Wells Security. You saw them today.”

“This is kidnapping. Not some dispute over a dog.”

She seemed adamant. “We can’t call the police.”

“The guys in the SUV have him?” Chase asked.

Sarah had not stopped shaking her head. “Two men in a boat snatched him off the dock where he was crabbing.” She nodded over her shoulder. “The house is on the other side of the street. Backs onto Broad Creek.”

Chase knew that boat was gone into the dark, up Broad Creek, into the Intracoastal and gone among the thousands of barrier islands and miles of wetlands. “I still think you should call the police and—” He stopped as Chelsea whined loudly, struggling in his arms. He grabbed some disinfectant, and gingerly poured it into Chelsea’s wound as he pulled back the bandage. She whined once more, but didn’t fight him as he pressed the bandage back on the wound.

With a shaking hand, Sarah pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Using an ACE wrap, Chase secured the bandage and seal to Chelsea. She whined in pain, but didn’t try to pull away.

“Good girl.”

“Closest veterinarian!” Sarah shouted into the phone.

“Searching your location,” the phone replied. There was a pause, then the mechanical female voice continued. “I found three veterinarians. One of them is fairly close to you.”

Sarah did something on the screen of her phone and put it to her ear. There was a pause, then Sarah spoke rapidly. “We have a dog that’s been shot. She’s hurt badly.”

Another pause, then Sarah looked at Chase. “The vet will meet us at her office. Twelve-forty Palmetto Road. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah.”

Once more, Chase scooped Chelsea up and carried her out to the Jeep, Sarah following. He laid the dog down in the back, then jumped in the driver’s seat as he tugged on a black pullover that had been draped over the steering wheel. As soon as Sarah slid into the passenger seat, he threw the Jeep in gear and raced down the driveway, spitting out gravel and taking the turn onto the hardtop too fast.

With the wind whistling past them and his focus on the road, there was no more conversation as Chase raced out of Brams Point and onto the Island’s main drag. He tried to remember if he’d seen a Vet’s office on his way to his new home in the morning, an event that seemed very long ago now.

“Eleven-ten,” Sarah called out, pointing to the right as she spotted an address. “It will be on that side. Soon.”

Chase saw a light go on in a window ahead and turned the wheel, skidding to a halt in front of the building. It was an old service station, painted bright green. Chase jumped out, picking up Chelsea and carrying her to the door. Sarah was ahead, opening it.

Chase came to an abrupt halt as he spotted a woman wearing jeans and a green smock waiting for him. Her red hair was fiery as he remembered, but cut short now, tight and efficient. “Erin?”

The veterinarian smiled. “Horace Chase. Been a long time. I got your message, but you didn’t leave a callback number and it just said private line.” The smile faded as she saw the blood on his and Sarah’s clothes. “Bring your dog in here.” She pointed toward a swinging door and led the way.

Chase carried Chelsea in, and gently set her down on an operating table. Erin already had a needle out, and expertly stuck it in Chelsea’s right front leg.

She looked at the ACE wrap, bandage, and seal. “You know what you’re doing. QuickClot. That’s good. And the seal.” She glanced up at him. “But that’s Army gear and Army training, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. West Point, and all that good stuff. Never saw you again after you left for the Academy. Tried to call you, and you never called back. Tried to write, and you never wrote back.” Erin shifted her focus back to the dog. “She’s stable. You can go back out now. I’ll take care of her.”

Chase nodded and slowly backed up.

Erin smiled. “Good to see you again, Chase.”

Chase could only nod, then his back was against the door and he almost stumbled out into the front room. Sarah had collapsed on a rumpled old bean-bag couch at one end of the room. He half-smiled, thinking the couch and the rest of the waiting area fit Erin Brannigan as he spotted a large rocking unicorn in the corner. At least the seventeen year-old Erin Brannigan he remembered with surprising clarity from his teenage years. Weeks, Chase reminded himself. He’d only known her weeks.

“You need to call nine-one-one,” he said.

Sarah was about to answer when the door to the operating room flew open, and Erin stuck her head out. Her red hair was covered with a surgical cap and her smock had a splatter of blood on it, and Chase felt a moment’s déjà vu, remembering the Evac Center in Kandahar, waiting on the doc to tell him about one of his men.

“Get in here, Chase. I need help to get the bullet out.”

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Genre – Thriller

Rating – PG

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The Secret of the Sacred Scarab by Fiona Ingram

A 5000-year-old mystery comes to life when a scruffy peddler gives Adam and Justin Sinclair an old Egyptian scarab on their very first day in Egypt. Only when the evil Dr. Faisal Khalid shows a particular interest in the cousins and their scarab, do the boys realise they are in terrible danger. Dr. Khalid wants the relic at all costs.

Justin and Adam embark upon the adventure of a lifetime, taking them down the Nile and across the harsh desert in their search for the legendary tomb of the Scarab King, an ancient Egyptian ruler. They are plunged into a whirlpool of hazardous and mysterious events when Dr. Khalid kidnaps them. They survive terrifying dangers in a hostile environment (such as a giant cobra and sinking sand), pursued by enemies in their quest to solve the secret of the sacred scarab. They must translate the hieroglyphic clues on the underside of the scarab, as well as rescue the missing archaeologist James Kinnaird, and their friend, the Egyptologist Ebrahim Faza, before time runs out. They must also learn more about the ancient Seven Stones of Power and the mysterious Shemsu-Hor.

With just their wits, courage, and each other, the boys manage to survive … only to find that the end of one journey is the beginning of another!

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Genre – Juvenile Fiction

Rating – G

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The Frog Prince (A Romantic Comedy) by Elle Lothlorien

It was his pheromones that did it. With one sniff, sex researcher Leigh Fromm recognizes that any offspring she might have with the mysterious stranger would have a better-than-average chance of surviving any number of impending pandemics. But when Leigh finds out that the handsome "someone" at her great aunt's wake is Prince Roman Habsburg von Lorraine of Austria, she suddenly doubts her instincts--not that she was intending to sleep with the guy. 

The royal house of Habsburg was once completely inbred, insanity and impotency among the highlights of their genetic pedigree. (The extreme "bulldog underbite" that plagued them wasn't called the Habsburg Jaw for nothing.) It doesn't matter that his family hasn't sat on a throne (other than the ones in their Toilette) since 1918, or that Austria is now a parliamentary democracy. 

Their lives couldn't be more different: Roman is routinely mobbed by paparazzi in Europe. Leigh is regularly mocked for having the social skills of a potted plant. Even if she suddenly developed grace, charm and a pedigree that would withstand the scrutiny of the press and his family, what exactly is she supposed to do with this would-have-been king of Austria who is in self-imposed exile in Denver, Colorado?

A handsome prince, gut-busting laughs, love, dirty ballroom dancing, pathetic commoners, sex factoids, Vienna palaces, cursing in German, random hilarity, little to no frogs. See why tens of thousands of readers have fallen in love with this Amazon bestseller! Because someday your prince will come...sort of.

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Genre - Romantic Comedy

Rating – PG

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Website http://www.ellelothlorien.com/

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Orangeberry Book of the Day – The Titan Drowns by Nhys Glover

Prologue

Karl

Summer 2336 New Atlantis, GAIAN CONFEDERACY

              ‘We are undertaking another major mission,’ Jac Ulster announced to the assembled group of Retrievers from the Child and Adult Programs. ‘Like our 1942 mission, we will require a large, well-orchestrated team working in strategic stages. Our main Target will be the forty-eight children our research has indicated were not seen during the chaos of the early hours of April 15, 1912, and whose bodies were never found.’

‘April 15, 1912. That is when…’ Pia Rogaland interrupted in stunned amazement.

‘The Titanic sank,’ Jac finished for her, nodding at the tall blonde. ‘Yes, you have correctly identified our objective. We are going to redress a little of the loss that occurred that day.’

Karl Ontario felt his heart flutter strangely in his chest. It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced this odd sensation since he’d heard the news of the planned Titanic mission, but it still struck him as uncharacteristic. It almost felt like sick excitement; but that was absurd. The only time he’d ever been excited by anything was in his Original body when an experiment had yielded interesting results.

Since then, some 216 years, excitement had never been an emotion he’d experienced. Interest, determination, compassion, contentment and satisfaction were feelings he recognised in varying degrees of mild intensity, but never excitement.

It was commonly believed that the cloned bodies they inhabited were responsible for their race’s lack of passion, but there was no scientific evidence for that. Whatever the cause, it was certainly factual to say that post-apocalyptic man’s emotions were dimmed and marginalized.

Of course for him, even in his Original, the ‘desires of the flesh’ and the concomitant passions it aroused had only ever been mild. One lady-friend had once told him he had ice water in his veins and he’d believed her. He was, after all, the product of his upbringing.

Karl’s father had been an eminent Canadian surgeon in the middle years of the twenty-first century. A fierce and cutting man, he’d ridiculed all emotion out of his son by the time he was ten years old. All that was left in Karl from that time on was the determination to excel. This he’d done spectacularly, out-shining his father in his chosen field by the time he was twenty-five.

Once this goal was achieved, he’d begun looking for new fields to conquer. It was then that he’d encountered the early work on accelerated cellular development the government was funding. Once he saw the potential for their experiments, his course was set.

It gave him satisfaction to know that he was partly responsible for saving what was left of humanity after the Last Great Plague decimated their numbers. Humanity had been whittled down to little more than a few hundred thousand after that last catastrophe, which ended the Second Dark Age.

He firmly believed that he’d been spared by Divine Intervention so that their work, which had previously been directed into military areas, could be utilized to save mankind. Had he or one of his team not been one of the one in a thousand who survived that horrendous pandemic, no one would ever have known about their spectacular research and results. The sterile and sickly survivors of their race would have died out, and humanity would have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Before the Last Great Plague, if anyone had asked him about his beliefs about Divinity he would have called himself an “unconvinced agnostic.” He’d wanted to believe there was a God, but his analytical mind had never found the proof needed to commit to such a belief.

He’d gotten all the proof he needed the day he woke up alone in a town filled with the dead and realised he had the knowledge of cloning that could save the lives of those few who remained.

Man had paid a huge price for his hubris and neglect, but a merciful Creator had given them a way to redeem themselves. The statistical chances of any top scientists surviving that pandemic were infinitesimally small. Yet, among the survivors, there were a surprisingly large number of eminent specialists from a wide cross section of the sciences, including those involved in cellular transpositioning. Their research had eventually led to the time travel they now employed to Retrieve suitable candidates from the past to replenish their depleted numbers.

“Noah’s Ark for humanity” he called the Last Great Plague of 2120; somehow, it had selected survivors who could preserve the best of mankind’s legacy.

His mind returned to the topic at hand. The Retrieval teams were going to Jump to 1912 and pluck children and other suitable adult candidates from the decks of the mortally wounded Titanic. And, for the first time in his life, he was intensely excited by the prospect and wanted to be involved.

Karl wasn’t a Jumper. Such work was left to the more adventurous of his kind. He held a support role – the Head of New Atlantis’ Medical and Research Facility. Not once in the last seventy years of time travel had he felt the urge to involve himself in that other side of life.

Until now. Until the word Titanic reminded him of the undulating rows of grey stone markers, many unnamed, he’d seen in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when he was a child.

His mother had taken him to the Fairview Cemetery to visit the grave of her father that long ago day. While she stood quietly grieving, he’d wandered off into another part of the cemetery. There he found the 121 graves, arranged in three neat rows of markers, all bearing the same date of death: April 15, 1912.

Those graves had affected him. Separated by time – nearly 200 years – he’d still felt a strange bond with those unnamed bodies who were robbed of all that made them human: their names, their history and their loved ones. All they had left were their corpses, which had been collected up by unknown hands and buried in graves of earth, instead of the water that had claimed the bulk of their comrades.

His mother told the story for many years after – well out of his father’s hearing, of course – of how she’d found him standing there among those stones. When asked what had possessed him to wander off like that, he’d simply replied, ‘I came to keep them company. It must have been terrible to die cold and friendless that way and then to be left here to lie forever among nameless strangers.’

He didn’t remember saying that, but it was certainly what he felt for a long time afterwards. All he did remember of his interaction with his mother in that spot was her taking his cold hand in her warm one and gently leading him away.

Now, more than 200 years further on again, those nameless dead were calling to him once more. And this time he could do more than provide short-term companionship. This time he could help to save some of those lost souls from their lonely fate.

Jac and Chen, the leaders of the Retrieval programs, would fight him over his decision to join the undertaking. They’d claim he was too valuable to their society to risk on such a dangerous mission. However, he’d be adamant, and he had enough pull in the higher echelons of government to get his way.

The prep for the mission would take many months. During that time, he planned to integrate with a new clone. Currently, he had been housed in his fourth clone for fifty-five years. Not the limit of the lifespan for a clone by any means, but he wanted to be fit and energetic in a twenty-year-old body if he was to take on tasks that might prove physically demanding and dangerous.

That thought roused the sick excitement once again. Could he be changing in the same way some of the Old Timers were beginning to change after they found their significant other? It felt like it might be the case.

After nearly 250 years within a chrysalis of emotionless rationality, he seemed to be feeling the first tremulous moves toward freedom and life. Within the death throes of that metal Titan, he sensed he would be reborn. The how and why of it he didn’t know, but the when and where was certain: April 15, 1912, Mid Atlantic, aboard the doomed Titanic.

He couldn’t wait!

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Genre – Romance

Rating – Between PG13 and R (sensual but not erotic)

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Author Interview – Brian Francis Heffron

What is your greatest strength as a writer? I can describe things so that you are able to see them in your own mind’s eye. Description is my forte. Whether it be a landscape or a person I feel that I can bring a person or place to life through my prose.

How did you come up with the title? A Mandala is Sanskrit for “magic circle” and is used to meditate on to raise one’s concioisness, or it can represent a person who is fully actualized and complete in their development. Colorado Mandala was the place where all three of my main characters became themselves, some after a very long and difficult effort.

How much of the book is realistic? All of Colorado Mandala is based on real places and real people. But I invented all else. I took the characters I knew and put them into a place I knew best and let them just live their lives there. It seems to have worked.

Have you included a lot of your life experiences, even friends, in the plot? Yes. This book totally reflects the way of life I was leading back in the 1970s. It was a time of adventure and dramatic cultural change and I was a part of it. The plot may be an attempt to self heal as the main character has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as I do…and so it is very possible that in writing this book I was really trying to get some perspective on my own issues and to try and create a vehicle that would assist me in getting rid of the PTSD within my own heart. It sort of worked.

What are your goals as a writer? My goals as a writer are acceptance and an audience that likes my work. The goal of this book is an attepmpt to help others who may have PTSD understand that they are not alone. And that there is a way out of the scourge and pain that PTSD causes.

Who is your favorite author and why? Ernest Hemingway reinvented the novel and I think he deserves credit for his work, not for the farce of a life he lead as a hyper masculine character. His books are all beautiful and engaging. His sentences are solid and purposeful. There is no waste or extravagance: Just powerful but simple writing and storytelling.

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Genre – Literary Fiction

Rating – PG

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Website http://www.brianheffron.net/brianheffron.net/Welcome.html

The Haunting of Wolfe Haven by Debbie A. Heaton

“Riley Russell is gorgeous, smart, and successful. She also has a broken heart she’s managed to keep secret from everyone—including herself. Three years ago, she walked away from her marriage to entrepreneur Tristan Russell, believing there was no hope for the relationship. But when he reenters her life unexpectedly, Riley must fight to remain independent and in control of the life she has built.

Tristan, as handsome and accomplished as ever, is planning to get remarried, but first he must divorce Riley. To save her broken heart, Riley must confront her feelings for Tristan, his family, and his haunted ancestral house, Wolfe Haven. Along the way, she must navigate a minefield of secrets and mysteries, including arson, betrayal, and murder.

As Riley and Tristan try to find love with each other a second time around, they come to grips with things that go bump in the night. If Riley isn’t careful, she may fall prey to enemies that are closer than she thinks.”

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Genre – Romance (Gothic)

Rating – R for graphic sex and language

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Contact by AFN Clarke

 

This new expanded edition of AFN Clarke’s bestselling and controversial book CONTACT is a raw, visceral, “no-holds-barred” account of combat from one of the men we paid to kill. When first published it caused a furor for its devastating honesty and chilling revelations.

Clarke vividly recounts his experiences of two tours in Northern Ireland (in Belfast and Crossmaglen) as a Platoon Commander with Britain’s elite Parachute Regiment during the blood soaked 1970′s. Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan comment on how relevant the book still is today, as the dangers, political agendas and religious roots underlying the conflict are eerily and heartbreakingly similar to their own more recent experiences.

Clarke takes us to heart of the action.  We feel what it’s like to live each day with senses on high alert, waiting to be ripped apart by the accuracy of a sniper or a well-hidden bomb.  We enter the private world of soldiers ordered to hold the lines in an ancient quarrel they have little affinity for, but whose consequences are deadly.  We experience their emotions, fear, courage, humor, bravado and the anguish of death.

This expanded edition continues from where the print version ended, revealing the untold nightmare Clarke lived through having nearly died, with half his insides missing, suffering from PTSD and being expected to return to a “normal life”.  A story of the scars of war that affect generations.  Of heartache, courage and hope for peace.

“I am an ex soldier who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and this is an excellent account of what it was like. I only wish we had an officer like Captain Clarke.” pm, 5 Stars Amazon UK“.. its honesty and passion cannot be denied .. Mr. Clarke has sent out a powerful and disturbing early warning signal.” Maurice Leitch, Daily Telegraph.

“..a major contribution to our understanding of war and how people act .. Contact is the work of a brave writer.” Kevin Toolis, Irish News.

“As a civilian it’s hard to imagine what’s it’s really like to be a soldier in combat but this book opened my eyes. I highly recommend it …” KTHuffy, 4 Stars Amazon USA.

CONTACT was reviewed by soldiers who served with Captain Clarke as verification of his recollections.  It was first published in the UK in 1983 by Martin Secker & Warburg, was serialized for 5 days in The Mirror and became an instant best seller. In 1984 it was published in paperback by PAN Books, by Schocken Books New York and made into an award-winning BBC TV film.  And in 2012 came the expanded ebook edition, which all these years later is still selling strong.  Readers outside the UK are invited to visit Amazon.co.uk for soldier’s reviews and comments.

AFN Clarke is a full-time author and writes fiction of various genre – fast-paced thrillers (An Unquiet American), poignant human drama (Dry Tortugas), humorous satire (The Book of Baker Series - Dreams from the Death Age; Armageddon; Genesis Revisited), psychological horror (Collisions); and the Thomas Gunn suspense series (The Orange Moon Affair) with more coming soon. Visit the Amazon Kindle Store or afnclarke.com for further information.

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Genre – Autobiography / Biography & Memoir

Rating – 18+

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Website http://www.afnclarke.com/