Works Available New novels, etc. This page featured a selection of new and/or available material (agents and publishers take note). Please e-mail me with any comments or suggestions.

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Dave's Not Here A literary comic thriller Dave's Not Here begins as a laconic, funny, missing-person story among a group of down-but-not-quite-out people in San Diego in 1996, just before the Republican convention. It becomes a thriller, and builds to a bittersweet conclusion. Dave Pastiglione is a fiftyish alcoholic and failed newspaper manager who makes a marginal living delivering spices in a series of battered, gas-guzzling cars. Every Wednesday, he crashes on his friend Charlie's couch. An extended welfare family lives across the street, including Elyse and Estelle, two sisters with charms to burn. Charlie once worked for Dave on a defunct, offbeat newspaper in the tiny desert town of Jacumba, hard by the Mexican border. Now the only jobs Charlie can find are part-time gigs as a telemarketer and a proofreader of classified ads. When Dave suddenly stops showing up, Charlie wonders what happened to him, but it takes a prod from Carol, his ambitious ex-girlfriend, for him to stir his latent journalistic skills and find out what happened to him. Together, they find evidence that Dave, a devout Catholic despite three divorces, and Estelle, pregnant with her third child at the age of 20 and considering an abortion, are being held against their will at a retreat in the high desert by a group dedicated to saving unborn children. Dave's Not Here is that rare combination of literary and commercial fiction, featuring a page-turning plot, compelling characters, and thoughtful prose.

Quest For Beer A comic novel The setting is Mesopotamia, circa 10,000 B.C., at the dawn of agriculture. A clan of hunter-gatherers lives as people have since time immemorial, moving between seasonal encampments in pursuit of game and wild plants. But one free-thinking fringe has decided to try something new and radical: a permanent settlement. Life is hard for the villagers. They face not only the uncertainty of the annual harvest, but the implacable hostility of the hunter-gatherers, who periodically raid them. But when one of the village women stumbles upon a flooded container of barley cakes and tastes the resulting liquid, she sets in motion a series of events that will change the world. Equal parts Clan of the Cave Bear and Encino Man, with a dash of Monty Python, Quest for Beer will have you laughing all the way to the refrigerator.