For Zane

It was in 1938, on the muskeg side of Eagle Lake, as a fog sluiced through the pine trees and a thunderstorm took hold, that Joseph Widmark trolled his way back to the boat slip and the lake unraveled with his first and only muskie.  He was only eighteen then, a freshman in college, and although the fish weighed less than thirty pounds, he won the trophy and a check for $27 that they told him he could cash at any bank in West Ontario.

They drove along the highway in a rented Ford Granada.  Joseph was sixty-two now and his son, David, had heard the story many times.  In all the years since that first muskie hunt, Joseph Widmark had never hooked another.  He and his son had traveled to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario.  They had caught their share of pickerel and pike.  But the only muskies they had seen were nailed up on the doorframes of old roadside motels, or gill-pegged by some fishing cabin, their prehistoric mouths alive with jagged teeth, their long, thick bodies ribbed with orange tiger stripes.

The muskellunge was like a dream to the old man, as wild and nameless as the forests and the prairies racing from the highway to the glistening horizon.

David had been planning this fishing trip for months.  His last showing in New York had been a great success.  He had sold a dozen paintings, gathered commissions, and the thick manila folder, which his father kept inside his cherry wood credenza for significant reviews, was growing tattered at the edges.

At first the old man had been reticent.  “I’m flattered but it isn’t a good time,” he’d said.  “I may be working those two weeks.  Besides, it’ll soon be Christmas.  Your mother’s been cooking round the clock.”

David looked down at his telephone, at the charged cream plastic line that ran into the wall, along the highways and the malls, and down into the rich New Jersey soil.  “I already talked with her,” he said.  “Come on, Dad, it’s only for a week.  You used to take me fishing all the time.  If it’s the money, I already told you.  My treat.”

“No, it isn’t that.  But won’t the lake be frozen?”

“I checked. They just held the Great Muskie Hunt ten days ago.  Winner caught a forty pounder.”

“We’d have to buy new line, you know.”

“I did.”

There was a pause that stretched across two states.  “How would we go?” the old man asked.

“We’ll fly into Duluth and rent a car.”

There was another pause and David heard his father cover up the mouthpiece.  He looked up at the pencil sketch of Windsor Castle that hung above the telephone.  It was a Judge’s reproduction, with chestnut trees and a brace of desultory cows.  Rising high above the foliage, the northern tower wavered like a flag.  It had been a present from his father on his fifteenth birthday, the year that he had won the Harrow Art Prize, the year that he had gotten drunk for the first time and lost his innocence in London, the year he’d realized that without his painting nothing seemed to matter.  Nothing.  “Dad, are you still there?”

“I’ll drive the rental if you knot my wire leaders for me.”

*   *   *

Yeager’s Fishing Camp could only be approached by boat, seaplane or a long-abandoned logging road.  The camp had been designed by Fritz Yeager himself, a man of legend throughout the Vermilion Range.  He had left the town of Ely as a boy, become a kind of hero in the War, and prospered as an architect until his ascendance to Ontario’s Premier in ’68.  In truth, the man had been a middling politician.  But the people didn’t care.  He was one of them.  And, when he finally retired to his camp, they welcomed him with a celebration of such opulence that it drew national attention and put the town of Ely on the map.

Fritz Yeager drank.  At night he sat out on the front porch of the Trading Post, pulling at a bottle whose label had been boiled off years ago.  He was out there every night, regardless of the weather, smoking Player’s Medium Navy Cut cigarettes and talking to the fishermen and hunters.  The camp was usually deserted by November.  A few still hunted moose throughout the winter but most observed the same internal timepiece as the birds, migrating south to warmer climes, retreating as the ice advanced across the lake.

The Trading Post was a massive clapboard structure with a hint of Maine design.  The dining room took up the western wing, the Yeagers the rest.  There was a kind of general store just off the dining area that featured fishing gear, thick rods the size of walking sticks and garish muskie plugs with feather, steel and rubber band attachments.  Behind the counter, a local high school girl named Daisy Leech ran through the merits of each lure with practiced salesmanship.  “They call this the Torpedo.”

Joseph picked up the jointed plug and flicked the stainless steel propeller.  It was at least six inches long.  “Do I get my money back if I don’t land a muskie by tomorrow?”

Daisy looked aghast.  “I’m sorry, Mr. Widmark.  I can only guarantee the plug, not your luck.”

“We’ll take it,” David said.  “Put it on my tab.  No, don’t bother to wrap it up.  I’ll eat it here.”

Daisy wrinkled her nose.  “Okay.  I guess.”

David and his father sidled off to their dining table, snickering like a pair of schoolboys.  “Eat it here,” Joseph repeated once they were sitting down.  He looked down at the muskie plug, curled up beside his fork like some gigantic hornet, bright yellow and chartreuse.  Daisy had forgotten to remove the price tag.  “Seventeen dollars,” he said tightly.  “That’s a bit steep, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” David said.

“No, really,” Joseph answered.  “We don’t need another lure.”

David put his menu down.  “Dad, it’s alright.”

“I bet it cost them only fifty cents to make it.  I’m going to take it back.”

He began to stand but David reached across the table and held him by the shoulder.  “Dad,” he said, “for crying out loud, you’re embarrassing me.  I told you, it’s alright.  Maybe it’ll change our luck.”

For the rest of the meal they barely spoke.  Joseph stabbed at his stroganoff half-heartedly, while David talked about the northern pike which they had spotted on the north side of the lake.  The fishing had been disappointing.  For five days they had combed the shores of Eagle Lake, their fingers growing numb against the wind, the silence only broken by the sound of anxious errant fins and the stutter of their outboard motor.

Their coffee came, followed by a fifth of scotch, and the room began to warm.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph finally said.

“What for?”

“About the plug, I mean.  I guess I over-reacted.  It’s just . . . ”

David put his empty glass down on the table.  “How’s business, Dad?” he said.

“A little slow.  But it’s the holidays.”

“I talked with Mom.”

“What did your mother say?”

“She told me to ask you.  You know how she is.”

The old man smiled.  “Yes, I know how she is.”  He sighed.  “It’s just a little slow, that’s all, David.  It’s the recession.”  He slipped the bill for their supper under the tablecloth and glanced about the room.

David laughed.  “I think they’ll find it.”

“Next year, perhaps.  After they clear these dishes.  We’ll be long gone by then.”

It seemed to David that his father only came alive when he went fishing.  No, more than that; it was as if the journey from New Jersey to the camp had been along the temporal plain, as if the roads and air routes were mementos on a line of gradual regression.

David recalled a fishing trip to France.  He had been a boy, no more than ten, and they had motored on the Continent.  All those years in Europe had passed by in a snowstorm of discovery.  Joseph had still worked for US Express then, and his American salary had led them to believe that there would always be a little more next year.   David’s mother, Kirsten, came into her own.  Her business parties always drew the most outlandish personages – concubines and priests, film directors, media tycoons and ministers of state.  They lived in Italy, in England, France and Greece.  They summered in Dubrovnik, and wintered in Marrakech.

To Kirsten, it was what she had expected, a bright extension of her youth and the world which she had fashioned on the ceiling of her childhood bedroom late at night in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the daughter of an orthodontist.  But to Joseph it had come with patience and devisal, the product of hard work and the ethic he had learned in the storeroom of his father’s tavern in Cicero, West Chicago, stacking cases as a boy.

Their compact was a merger of ideals.  His duty was to bring the grist to mill, and hers was to refine it.

David had just been accepted to Harrow in England when his father informed him they were moving again.  The old man had been offered a position in New York, a new bank after more than thirty years with US Express, a new title, and a raise of such dizzying significance that he just couldn’t say no.  For four years, David traveled back and forth between boarding school and home on Trans World Airlines.

At first, the new job proved to be exactly to what Joseph had aspired.  Kirsten bought a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Joseph joined the Club.  It was expected.  It was the prize, the averment of success.  Then the go-go years were gone and the promise was rescinded.  The man whom Joseph had been told he would replace remained to fill the same space on the ladder.  Responsibilities were shifted and Joseph found himself one day with a Conrail monthly pass inside his wallet but without a destination.

For weeks he traveled to the city only to wander along the streets and avenues, confused and purposeless, unable to find work or the courage to tell Kirsten that the morning ritual – the kiss and car ride to the station – was a sham.

It was at college in Massachusetts that David first learned the family was in trouble.  His sister told him that the old man’s stocks, secured as options, had fallen in the slump, and that the bank for which he’d worked for years was calling in the loan.  The entrepreneurial schemes he chiseled late at night in his home office turned out to be unsuited to the times.  The market was going through disintermediation.  The family moved again, to a condo in New Jersey.  David was told to get a scholarship, and then a student loan that Joseph promised to repay as soon as things went back to normal.  Time passed, and with it all their savings.  Joseph tried to keep his courage up.  He still had faith in all the dreams his father had bequeathed him.  He still believed that if he worked a little harder, a little longer and a little faster, the prize would come to him again.

*   *   *

The boat moved silently across the surface of the lake.  They had turned the motor off and as they drifted through the inlet, they worked the shoreline and the weed beds carefully.  Concentric circles marked the ingress of their lures.  Beyond the dead brown cattails, spruce trees scrambled for a foothold in the rocky soil.

David hooked his spinner on the eyelet of his rod and stretched out in the stern.  He was cold, tired.  They had already caught their lunch and he was anxious to relax, to build a fire and fillet the walleye.  There was nothing like the taste of flaky white fish fried up in lard in a cast iron pan over an open fire.

He watched his father cast his spoon beyond the tree stump near the water’s edge.  It was uncanny how the old man timed his casts.  David had never equaled his precision, the smooth unhurried movement of his arm, the way he jigged the rod so that the spoon looked more realistic.

“What do you think?” said David as his father cast again.  “I’m starving.”

Joseph looked up at the sky.  Fat bands of imbricated clouds moved lazily across the sun.  “Some people go hungry for days in order to catch a fish,” he said.  “You’ll never hook a muskie if your line’s dry.”

David shrugged.  Across the lake, a flock of seagulls floated on the water.  “I got my share of pike,” he said.  “Besides, look at this place.  I don’t care if I ever catch a muskie.  It’s worth it just to be here.”

Joseph shook his head.  “There are two kinds of fishermen, David.  One is content to throw his lure out and see what happens.  The other one hunts muskie.”

David pulled his watch cap down below his ears.  “Jesus, Dad.  It’s just a fish,” he said.

Joseph hooked a finger around the line and cast his lure toward the shore.  It landed just beside the stump.  David watched his father work the rod.  He swept the tip from side to side, his left hand turning constantly, the line retreating to the spool.  Then, suddenly, his movements stopped.  The thick rod bowed and, in the distance, David saw the water swell.

The old man snapped the rod back violently to set the hook.  Once, twice.  There was a splash and David heard the nylon singing as the spool reversed itself.

“What is it?” David asked excitedly.

“Don’t know.”

David slipped his own rod against the gunwale and reached down for the landing net.  The fish was running for the rocks.  “Looks big,” he said.

Joseph twisted on his seat, swinging his line across the bow.  The fish ran once again, then slowed.  Joseph pumped the rod, the nylon shivered, and David saw a dark shape crack the water for an instant.

It was a northern pike, and judging from the movement of the rod, the way its dorsal fin had slashed the surface of the lake, he knew that it was huge.  “It must be twenty pounds,” he said excitedly.  “Or more.”

David felt his heart race as he slipped the net into the icy water.  Joseph turned the fish at last; it headed for the boat.  He pulled the rod up, trying madly to retrieve the line, to keep the nylon taut.  The fish drew closer.

David could see it clearly now.  Its body shivered in the deep.  The spoon was hooked clean in the upper corner of its mouth, forcing the pallid jaws apart.  “This way,” he told his father.  “Just lead it to me.”

“I’m trying,” Joseph answered with a smile.  “Tell him!”  He paused and suddenly the smile was gone.  “Jesus,” he said.  “What’s that?”

His son looked deep into the lake.  The pike had twisted to one side and, clamped across its back, primordial and huge, David could see the thorny jawbone of another fish.  There was a flash of golden stripes.  A splash.  The frigid water heaved.  The reel began to sing again and David saw the pike collapse upon itself, the massive body cut in half.  He pulled his hand into the boat reflexively.  The pike began to sink, its severed head concealed behind an amaranth of blood.  The second fish advanced.  It swam lethargically beside the boat, the jaws maneuvering the remnants of the pike along its bony throat, the hackled fins extended and blood discharging through its gills.

For a moment it was still, its left eye fixed upon the fisherman as if in recognition.  The fish was as long as the boat.  Then, slowly and deliberately, it sank into the depths.

David looked up at his father.  The old man’s face was ashen, but his eyes were clear, and his lips were pulled back in a grin.  He fixed his gaze on David and began to laugh.

“Muskie,” he said.  Then he began to reel his line in frantically.  “Well, don’t just sit there.  Fetch me that damned Torpedo.”

*   *   *

David woke to the sound of voices arguing.  Water shimmered in the moonlight outside the window, and for a moment he was sure the lake had frozen over in the night.  It certainly felt cold enough.  The Franklin stove glowed in the corner of the cabin but the air was crisp and cutting.  David glanced across the room and saw his father’s bed was empty.  The arguing grew louder.  “Shit,” he spat.  David pulled a sweater on and stumbled out the door.

From the porch, down the path that ran between the cabins, David could see the outline of the Trading Post.  The front door was open and Fritz Yeager stood in the entrance, illuminated by a light which flickered from within.  He was shouting at someone, or at something in the night but – from the cabin – David thought the jetty looked deserted.

Who’s he shouting at?  Then he saw his father on the path only a dozen yards away.

“What is it?” David asked him.  “Dad?  Dad, what’s going on?”

“It’s Yeager.  I think he’s drunk,” said Joseph.  “Go back to sleep.”  He started down the path.

By the time Joseph reached the Trading Post, Yeager had descended to the jetty where the fishing boats were tied up to a line.  He was staring at the lake, his hands set deep within his pockets.  Joseph idled up beside him.  “Good evening, Mr. Yeager,” he said casually, as if he’d just passed him on the way to supper.

David could see Yeager spin about.  His hair hung loosely in his face.  “Who’s that?” he said.

“It’s me.  Mr. Widmark.”

“Oh, the Widmarks.  Yes.  I know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind.”  Yeager paused and looked back out across the bay.  “It’s the lake,” he said.  “It was always her idea.  Eagle Lake, I mean.”

Joseph stamped his sides.  “It’s a little cold out here, don’t you think?”

Yeager laughed.  The moon appeared between the clouds, translucent as a lollypop.  “I don’t know why,” he said, “but Sarah just hates me.”

“Mrs. Yeager?  How can you say that?  I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“It was always her idea.  They all were.  I just wanted to build houses.”

“It’s late, Mr. Yeager.  Why don’t you go back up to the house, try and get some sleep?”

“It’s the lake.  You just don’t see it.”

“That’s right – the lake.  It’ll still be here tomorrow.”  Joseph took Yeager by the arm and led him up the jetty toward the house.

When they had reached the porch, Yeager turned on his heels without warning.  He put a hand on Joseph’s shoulder, leaned forward, his mouth to Joseph’s ear, and whispered, “It was here.  Before we came, long before.”  The words came slowly from his mouth.  “All of those dreams.  Under the water, in the stones and trees.  At the bottom of the lake.  Waiting for us.”

“Go to bed, Mr. Yeager,” Joseph said.  He pushed him gently through the entrance.  Then he let the screen door slam, and made his way along the path back toward the cabin.

David was still standing on the porch when he returned.

“Drunk,” said Joseph, entering the cabin.  “Dead drunk.”

“And we’re paying for his poison.”

“No, you are,” Joseph said.

David didn’t answer.  He closed the door.  They undressed and got back into bed.  Neither of them spoke for several minutes.  David could hear his father shivering in the bunk nearby.  “Cold out there, huh?” he said at last.

For a moment Joseph didn’t respond.  Then he said, “What I don’t understand is why a man like that would drink.  I mean, he has everything.  He was a Premier, for Christ’s sake.  He’s rich.  His wife is charming and attractive.”

“And a good cook to boot,” said David, trying to lighten the mood.

“He almost ran for Prime Minister,” Joseph continued, ignoring him.

David turned over onto his back and tried to fall asleep.  He thought about his work, the paintings yet undone, the showing his dealer had set up for January.  If sales continued as they had, by spring he would finally have enough to buy that loft in SoHo.  Just barely, anyway.  David pictured his easel by the windows, the southern light exploding through the glass.

But then, of course, there was his father.  If his mother’s fears were justified, everything would change.  The money would be needed to support his parents, and the loft would have to wait.  Maybe a year or so, at least until his father found a job.  But what if Joseph didn’t take the money?  No, thought David.  He’d have to.  What choice did he have?  It was just a question of positioning the offer.  David would say it was a loan, an investment in his father’s new consulting practice.  Damn his old-fashioned pride.  Why could they never talk directly?  Why did it always have to be oblique, so many metaphors behind symbols behind words?

David looked over at his father’s bunk.  It was almost dawn.  He could hear birds singing outside all around them.  Joseph was lying on his back, his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.  “Can’t sleep?” David said.

“Just thinking.”

“Not about that damned muskie, I hope.”

“No, about Yeager.  He kept going on and on about the lake.  He kept saying . . .”  Joseph turned onto his side and looked over at David.  “He was talking about dreams,” he said.  “He just wanted to build houses.”

“Then, why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know.  Why does anyone try living other people’s dreams?  It’s different for you, David.  You’re another generation.  But, in some ways,” Joseph added, “I’m just like Mr. Yeager.”

“You’re not a drunk, Dad.”

“Not yet, you mean.”

“Not ever.”

The old man looked up at the ceiling once again.  “I want to be a producer, David.  That’s all.  Do you understand?  Not a consumer.  I just want to make something.”

“You will, Dad.  I know you will.”  David tried to think of something else to say, but the words seemed to float above him, out of reach, brittle as ice, like the sounds of the birds in the trees.

*   *   *

From the inlet on the muskeg side of Eagle Lake, near the stretch of water where in 1938 the old man had begun his journey, David heard the calling of a loon, a mournful echo of remembrance, a sound as solitary as the muskellunge his father hunted.  They worked the shoreline quickly, their casts meticulous and true.  But with each flick of the wrist, the sun slipped closer to the burnished lip of the horizon, the termination of their holiday, and the onset of their journey home.

Joseph was using the Torpedo.  He was casting it again and again, across the inlet to the stump where they had raised that fish before.  David watched him from the corner of his eye as he tossed his own plug through the twilight.  The stars were beginning to glow.  A gust of wind disturbed the surface of the lake, chilling his bones.  As they fished, David sent up a silent prayer for his father to succeed, if only to relieve the gnawing hunger which that first fish, years before, had planted deep within him like a seed.  But he knew that it was finished.  Joseph would have to wait another year, another fishing season to find whatever he was looking for.

David put his rod down in the bottom of the boat and lit a cigarette.  The taste was bitter and delicious.

As if sensing his impatience, his father said, “Five casts.”

David counted them off in his head, the last one landing on the water with a splash so loud, so ominous, that they both sat up and stared into the darkness.  It was nothing.  The fishing trip was over.

Joseph slipped his rod beneath his seat and David started up the motor.  Across the lake, the green light of the jetty glowed rhapsodically.  “I don’t imagine Daisy Leech will take it back,” the old man said with a half smile.

“There’ll be another trip.”

“Could be.  Probably.  It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Not really.  It was worth it just to be here.  With you, I mean.”

David smiled.  “Is this the same guy who defined the difference between fishermen and muskie hunters?”

The old man stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared across the darkling surface of the lake.  “Almost,” he said.

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The Publicist by J.G. Sandom
Originally released under pen name Veronica C. Wright (1996, 2011)
Publisher: Cornucopia Press (May 15, 2024)
ISBN-10: ‎0997673974
Edition: First
Language: ‎English
Print Length: ‎420 pages

When successful PR executive, Ben Wright, discovers his 17-year-old daughter Nicki has just had an abortion, he resolves to take her away on a European vacation. They travel to Venice, where Nicki becomes enamored with a tall, handsome young minister from the Islamic Socialist country of Kush, in the throes of a famine and civil war against an American-educated, pro-Democracy guerrilla leader named Omo.

Nicki eventually runs away from her father and journeys to the remote North African nation. But when Wright pursues her, traveling deep into the heart of the Sahara, he is captured by the guerrillas, and forced to employ his PR skills in ways he never imagined.

A beautifully written and powerful black comedy that dramatizes the impact of today’s social media on politics and contemporary culture.

Take a 21st century version of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network, add a dash of Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog, plus a jigger of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, and you have The Publicist, a tightly paced coming-of-age story — for both Nicki and her father — that eerily anticipated the Arab Spring, and delivers an absurdist look at how today’s top news stories are packaged for consumption. A beautifully written and powerful black comedy which dramatizes the impact of social media on politics and contemporary culture.

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The Wave by J.G. Sandom
ISBN-10: ‎1452839239
Publisher: ‎CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 9, 2010)
Language: ‎English
Print Length: ‎318 pages

Homeland meets Deep Impact

In Israel, the notorious killer El Aqrab has been arrested. The Islamic Jihadist is famous for wrapping his victims up with incendiary devices designed to produce flames in the shape of Koranic verses. Some call it aesthetic destruction, the work of an artist. His long-awaited arrest is cause for celebration.

In Kazakhstan, 8 kilos of Highly Enriched Uranium is stolen and an ultimatum is issued to the West: Release El Aqrab or a nuclear bomb will be detonated. Plans are put into action but, at the last moment, El Aqrab escapes . . . and the authorities never get the bomb.

In New York, Homeland Security is convinced the bomb is headed their way. After decoding a secret message hidden in an Arabesque design within the e-wallpaper of a Jihadist suspect’s PC, only FBI Cryptanalyst Forensic Examiner (code breaker) John Decker thinks differently.

Aided by brilliant and beautiful oceanographer Emily Swenson, Decker believes the bomb’s true destination is La Palma, in the remote Canary Island chain.

Now, Decker and Swenson have less than six hours to prove their theory, defuse the bomb, and prevent a 17-story mega-tsunami from annihilating the Eastern Seaboard.

Kirkus said, “Sandom’s strength lies in the verve of his story, with writing that has both muscle . . . (and) brains . . . Races from improbable to crazywild, all in good fun, with Sandom always one step ahead . . . A story with enough manic energy to be worthy of a nuclear explosion.”

To purchase your copy of The Wave @ Amazon, click here.

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Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher by J.G. Sandom
ISBN-10: ‎145385875X
Publisher: ‎CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 20, 2010)
Language:‎ English
Print Length:‎ 232 pages

(Formerly Resurrection Men, Dutton/Penguin,
published under pen name T.K. Welsh)

Oliver Twist meets Taken

London in the 1830s is a Dickensian freak show. Medical scholars are desperate for dead bodies to use in the study of human anatomy. Body snatchers, known as Resurrection Men, steal corpses from fresh graves, or even pose as relatives to the dying poor in order to claim their bodies and sell them to researchers.

After his parents are killed right in front of him, 12-year-old Victor, from Modena, Italy, is sold as a cabin boy. His leg is shattered in a terrible fall on a ship and he is tossed overboard. Amazingly, Victor makes it to the coast of Britain where he is rescued by an elderly man who helps him learn English and nurses him back to health . . . only to sell him to Resurrection Men Tipple and Biggs.

The men bring Victor to London, where he joins a guild of beggars and befriends fellow outcasts Nico and Rebecca. Together, the children help each other beg, borrow and steal in order to survive.

Victor’s fortune changes when a kind physician, Dr. Thomas Quigley, takes an interest in him. He moves in with Dr. Quigley and becomes his apprentice. But Victor is unable to forget Rebecca and Nico.

They killed his best friend.
They kidnapped the girl that he loves.
Now there’s only one thing worse than their finding him . . .
and that’s hiM finding them first.

To find and rescue her, Victor must uncover the identity of the ghoulish murderer at the heart of London’s furtive trade in human trafficking.

As Victor attends an autopsy with Dr. Quigley, he is shocked to see his friend Nico on the table under the knife. Victor’s search to find out what happened to Nico eventually leads him to the greatest danger he’s ever faced. Someone is kidnapping and infecting street children with cholera in illegal medical experiments . . . and now Rebecca is missing.

Publishers Weekly called Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher, “A haunting tour of London’s underclass during the 1830s . . . Teens will likely be both captivated by Victor’s harrowing story as well as his ability to prevail in the face of harsh injustices.”

The novel was named a Junior Library Guild selection.

To purchase your copy of Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher @ Amazon, click here.

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Kiss Me, I’m Dead by J.G. Sandom
ISBN-10: ‎1453857028
Publisher: ‎Cornucopia Press (March 18, 2024)
Edition: 6th
Language: ‎English
Print length: ‎172 pages

(formerly The Unresolved, Dutton/Penguin, released under pen name T.K. Welsh)

Twilight meets Titanic

BEFORE THERE WAS 9/11 . . . THERE WAS 6/15

On June 15, 1904, over a thousand New Yorkers, mostly German immigrants on a Church outing, died when the General Slocum steamship caught fire and sank in the East River. It was the greatest mass killing in New York City history . . . until 9/11.

Originally released in hardcover by Penguin/Dutton under the title The Unresolved and pen name T.K. Welsh, the novel is being re-released by Cornucopia Press in time for the 120th anniversary of the General Slocum tragedy.

When her Jewish boyfriend is accused of the crime by the German community, 15-year-old Mallory Meer risks everything to solve the mystery behind the senseless tragedy. Was Dustin guilty? Or was someone else responsible for the fire that killed over a thousand men, women and children—including Mallory’s own baby sister?

Only Mallory can understand what this tragedy truly means. Because she’s not only one of the victims . . . she’s one of the dead.

An extraordinary story of revenge, misogyny, anti-Semitism, the quest for justice, and of a love so powerful that not even death could extinguish it.

Ranked one of the Top Ten Children’s Books of the year (2006) by the Washington Post, KISS ME, I’M DEAD was named a Notable Book for Teens by the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, a Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Teen’s Top Ten, and nominated for a Cybils literary award, a Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) by the American Library Association (ALA), and listed on Horn Book’s Recommended American Historical Fiction list.

The Washington Post said, “(J.G. Sandom) writes with a precision and delicacy unusual for YA fiction,” and called the book, “A subtle gem.” In its starred review, School Library Journal said, “ KISS ME, I’M DEAD tells a remarkable story in a remarkable way.” Horn Book Magazine called the work, “A decidedly unconventional ghost story . . . (and) a tightly wound novel.” Kirkus Reviews termed it, “A remarkable account.” Midwest Book Review called it, “a wonderfully different kind of ghost story.” And Romantic Times said, “ KISS ME, I’M DEAD is a book you shouldn’t pass up.”

Mallory Meer is like any other teenage girl. She likes to have fun. She thinks her sister is ridiculous. Her parents drive her crazy. She’s got a terrible crush on Dustin and follows him everywhere.

Mallory even has a summer job—figuring out the truth about the fire on the General Slocum steamship, the disaster that killed her sister. Mallory is determined to get to the bottom of it, to find out who’s guilty, and to finally bring them to justice.

Sometimes Mallory gets angry, very angry, and strange things happen when Mallory gets angry.

Yes, Mallory is like any other teenage girl . . . except Mallory is dead.

To purchase your copy of Kiss Me, I’m Dead @ Amazon, click here.

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The God Machine by J.G. Sandom
ASIN: ‎B004KABFQ4
Publisher: ‎CORNUCOPIA PRESS (January 22, 2011)
Language: ‎English
Print length: ‎ 482 pages

Da Vinci Code meets
Mission Impossible

Joseph Koster is not a swashbuckler or ordinary hero. He’s no Indiana Jones, Zorro or Robert Langdon. He was a mathematical prodigy who burned out way too young and who suffers from a mild form of Asperger’s. Now, middle-aged and divorced, he’s a competent architect with a great eye for puzzles and an insatiable curiosity.

It’s this curiosity that his best friend Nick Robinson exploits to entice Koster into the adventure of his life. Nick has come into possession of the coded journal of Ben Franklin said to reveal the location of an ancient Gospel which, if found, could undermine the very foundation of Christianity.

Once before (in Gospel Truths), Joseph Koster unearthed one of the Church’s most deeply buried secrets . . . and it almost cost him his life. But some treasures are too hard to resist. And as Koster puts the pieces of Franklin’s puzzle together, he discovers something even more startling . . . and infinitely more deadly. The Gospel is more than just text; it’s an electrical diagram, a blueprint to a mechanical device that—when combined with other pieces created by Leonardo Da Vinci, Alan Turing and Nikola Tesla—could open a doorway to Heaven.

Caroline Thompson (author of Edward Scissorhands) said, “Move over, Dan Brown . . . All hail J.G. Sandom . . . (The God Machine) is a thrilling and breathless, rapturously-written and mind-blowing read. It’ll keep you up all night, turning pages as fast as your little fingers can manage.”

BookPage said, “Sandom has a knack for combining legendary gospels, ancient secrets, star-crossed lovers and Masonic puzzles to create a simmering stew of conspiracy, intrigue and danger that keeps the plot pot boiling until the very end.”

And the Historical Novels Review said, “History galore, violence, and intrigue fill the pages of this tightly plotted, twisting and turning adventure story . . . Those who love numbers, physics, and a truly unpredictable, suspenseful mystery will relish the facts and ponderings replete in this well-written, mysterious spin-off of The Da Vinci Code. The God Machine is a very impressive historical thriller!”

As the story pinwheels between the present and the past, assisted by beautiful high-tech mogul Savita Sajan, Koster must race against time to decode Franklin’s journal before it falls into the hands of those who would do anything, kill anyone to suppress it. But in a world of secret societies, ancient conspiracies and Masonic puzzles, locating the prize is one thing—staying alive another.

For as Koster and Sajan are about the learn, the same key that unlocks the doorway to Heaven . . . could open the portals of Hell.

To purchase your copy of The God Machine @ Amazon, click here.

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A Is For Asparagus by Holland Dayze (J.G. Sandom and Sylvana Joseph)
ISBN-10: ‎1463636660
Publisher: ‎CreateSpace Independent (September 6, 2011)
Language: ‎English
Print Length: ‎32 pages

James Bond meets Chocolat (for kids)

When the asparagus of the world begin to disappear and VIA (Vegetable Intelligence Agency) agents Marc and Marie Couteau fall into a mysterious slumber, it is up to Jacques Couteau, their 10 year old son, to unearth the insidious forces behind the disappearance of one of his favorite vegetables—Asparagus Officinalis.

Jacques confronts the diabolical CLOWN and uncovers a hideous plot:  A mysterious anti-vegetable cabal behind the world’s largest fast food chain—YummyLand—is GMO engineering a new plant with twice the salt, twice the sugar, and three times the fat of ordinary fast food. Worse, each YummyLand product is highly addictive, causing a lifelong craving after only one bite, and transforming people into lazy, obese, do-nothing zombies . . . exactly what’s happened to Jacques’ parents.

Now, only Jacques—armed with his infamous Jacquesknife and aided by May Fourchette, a black-and-blue belt in every Martial Art attainable—can defeat the CLOWN and the mysterious Mr. Bibb, prevent the enslavement of the world, and ensure the survival of asparagus everywhere.

The first in a series (stay tuned for B is for Brussels Sprout), MainSail Reviews called this award-winning children’s book, “A delightful romp that will not only amuse and captivate your child, but may actually get him to eat those green things on his dinner plate rather than throwing them at you.”

This book is perfect to read with your kids at bedtime to encourage them to form an open-minded relationship with vegetables. If you have a picky eater, try this book!

To purchase your copy of A is for Asparagus @ Amazon, click here.

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