In this Victorian mystery, Scotland Yard Inspector Philip Devlin's
past comes back to haunt him when a series of gruesome murders unsettles
London, and the killer appears to single out Devlin for his game of cat and
mouse. Interwoven into the suspense of this story is a generous dose of humor
and romance, provided by the warm-hearted Devlin himself, a charmingly inept,
infatuated constable, a pair of elegant graverobbers and a couple of
free-thinking sapphites.
In The Opium Lady, JoAnne Soper-Cook leads her readers as
willing captives into the far corners of human yearning. Inspired by a box of
old snapshots, a teller of tales freezes a defining moment in the life of the
person in the photograph. The speaker discerns the hearts of everyone - men,
women and children, rich and poor, the scandalizers and the scandalized,
housewives and farmers, tradesmen, charlatans and ne'er-do-wells. Some live in
the shabby Maryland town of Hagersfield, and some live in Guernsey, a
Newfoundland outport. Gradually, in revealing the secrets of others, the
storyteller reveals herself.
Waterborne is a preternatural tale
of the Atlantic where the borders between sex, love, gender and the
supernatural merge. In her small Newfoundland home, a writer resists the pull
of her special room until she can resist no more. There, she binds her torso
with an elastic bandage, puts on her boxer shorts and singlet, her black jeans
and leather biker jacket. The young man who is not her is free to come and go
in the world as he pleases, unobserved. On these journeys, she leaves herself
behind like a shed skin upon a beach, a discarded pelt, a
warning.
Waterborne
tells the story of Stella Maris Goulding. The
unwanted child of a teenage mother and a usually absent father, she has grown
up in Elsinore, a Newfoundland fishing village, loved and cared for only by
her grandmother. Stella's beautiful mother belittles and abuses her without
remorse, rejecting the adoration of her daughter.
Stella will never know her mother's story, but during her last
visit, as her mother is dying, she learns what she needs to know about them
all: her Scottish great-grandmother, her grandmother, her terrible mother, and
herself. Through her mother, she also recognizes the true identity of the
beautiful young man she has befriended.
Available 2006 from Flanker Press:The Paragon of
Animals
Inspector Devlin is once again called to the case when "Spanish"
William, a notorious London rent boy, confesses to the murder of a clothier,
but all is not as it seems. Is William shielding someone else? And what if
that someone else were far more murderous and brutal than anyone
expected?
Coming in 2007 from Flanker Press:Come to Dust
Inspector Devlin is recalled from Boston when the daughter of a
prominent London banker goes missing. Her kidnappers make no ransom demands;
instead, her father receives a piece of his daughter every morning in the
post, starting with her hair and fingernails. Can Devlin find the girl before
she is carved to dust?
The Wide World Dreaming
A small Corsican village is his
birthplace, but it is France that shapes his destiny: the France of the
invader, the destroyer, the dissolute aristocracy. Torn from his island home
and sent away to the strict confines of a military academy, he learns
self-reliance and independence. Rising through the ranks of his
contemporaries, he learns that self-will is the only will, and one can never
demand more of Fortune than she is prepared to give. This is the tale of
Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French.
Waking the Messiah
Jesus Christ has returned - and he's living in the mind of a
madwoman. For Moriah, an emotionally disturbed woman, her strange memories of
a life in Galilee are at odds with the facts of her life, much of which has
been lived out behind the walls of an insane asylum. Incarcerated for the
brutal murder of her abusive father, Moriah must face a shocking truth: that
she may have been Jesus Christ in a former life. Using unorthodox methods of
therapy, her psychologist must attempt to break through the defences that
Moriah has erected in her own mind. What he finds is beyond logical
explanation: an existence that transcends the boundaries of mortal time and
finite space.
Waterborne is a preternatural tale of the Atlantic where the borders between sex, love, gender and the supernatural merge. In her small Newfoundland home, a writer resists the pull of her special room until she can resist no more. There, she binds her torso with an elastic bandage, puts on her boxer shorts and singlet, her black jeans and leather biker jacket. The young man who is not her is free to come and go in the world as he pleases, unobserved. On these journeys, she leaves herself behind like a shed skin upon a beach, a discarded pelt, a warning.
