Showing results by author "J. Gessler" in All Categories

The story begins in December 1955 with defense attorney Hugh Kerr pondering his fate. Stinging from the loss of a murder trial he believes he should have won, and still emotionally shattered from his own recent brush with the law that saw him and his private secretary, Ellen Thorne, running from the police on an elaborate and grisly homicide charge, he questions the foundations upon which he has based his life. This takes him to a subject rarely broached, even to himself: the fact Christmas always conjures up tragic memories from his past. This particular holiday, the remembrance has come ...

“Shepherd of the Kingdom” Shepherd Kingston wanted fame and fortune and when the young photographer found the opportunity to photograph the beautiful and elusive Wall Street wizard, Ericka Elvina, he thought he had discovered his chance. Warned by his friend and mentor, Abraham Trent, a professor of mysticism and the ancient black arts, that Ms. Elvina was not who she seemed to be, Shepherd ignores his “superstitious nonsense” and agrees to accompany her back to the mysterious kingdom apparently unknown to the civilized world. Realizing, to his horror, the kingdom has not progressed...

Life is complicated. No one needed to tell Hugh and Ellen Kerr that the addition of a baby to their family would be simple. Yet, neither could have anticipated the complications. Asking Jack to babysit was the first problem, immeasurably complicated when they lose the services of Mary Wade after Hugh and Lieutenant Wade get into a bitter argument over the way a confession was obtained from an under-aged boy. Distraught over the idea of losing Ellen as his legal assistant and confronted with his belief no child should be prosecuted as an adult, Hugh takes on the case of the youthful murder ...

SUMMARY The Hugh Kerr Mystery Series XXI “The Conundrum of the End of the World” It began as just another missing person's case. Janice Slattery came to the Merrick Detective Agency seeking help in finding her sister, Joyce St. James, who had disappeared a week ago. Tempted to pass it off as just another young woman who arrived in Hollywood seeking fame and fortune and then dropped out of touch to hide her failure, Janice argues this situation is different. Joyce was a dependable bank clerk who had lived in Southern California all her life. It wasn't like her to vanish, although she had...

In the sequel to Target’d, this novel follows the crew of the crippled star cruiser Target six months after the initial disaster which had killed the majority of the 200 crewmembers aboard, leaving the survivors with only limited power and ineffectual defense mechanisms. With only minimal ability to grow plants in a makeshift hydroponics unit, their food supply consists of nothing more than nutritional tablets discovered aboard in an undelivered supply consignment for colonists on a distant planet. Originally determining these tablets would last the few remaining survivors for decades, ...

What begins as a routine trip to work turns out to be anything but. Getting caught in traffic occasioned by a bank robbery, Hugh and Ellen Kerr try to backtrack, only to find themselves in an auto accident. While Hugh deals with the repercussions, Ellen spies the four bank robbers exchanging cars in an effort to elude the police. Returning to the scene to report what she saw, Ellen watches as one of the shooting victims, a young clerk, is taken to a waiting ambulance. Her concern over Barry Hutton's fate sets in motion a tragic series of events which leads her to demand Hugh represent the ...

“prioR Battles”After running the Federal blockade and returning to England, Rudy and Rose have three days to spend together before he is compelled to return across the Atlantic. To use that time together in a meaningful way, Rose requests Rudy tell her of his youth. Beginning with the tragic circumstances leading to his expulsion from VMI, his return to Charleston and subsequent disinheritance, he then details for her, in words so vivid she experiences his adventures alongside him, his voyage to San Francisco and foray into the gold fields as a ‘49er. The flashback, seen through the ...

“captains RB”RB XIISummary After completing the task of transferring Rudy’s wartime fortune from French banks to a company Rose has established in Bombay, they are freed from immediate worry. Although Rudy’s health and his repeated denial that he can never again captain a ship continues to worry her, she is determined to prove to his crew that he will again be “the man he was.” Unexpectedly, Rudy provides the means for her to put a plan into action when he purchases a steamboat in her name which he christens the Lady Rose. Making it clear he will not command a steamer from the ...

“skull and cRossBones” Summary Escaping Civil War-torn Richmond, Captain Rudy Blake and Rose Theodore, the newest member of the blockage-runner Reprobate, sail for England. During the voyage Rudy and Rose’s relationship deepen as he has the opportunity of teaching her shipcraft, armament and the nuances of sailing. Working together to thwart a plot by the notorious Captain Janey, the pair begin a “conquest” of Victorian England that includes establishing Rose as his chandler, the purchase of the Blake House and a foray into high society where a spirited drinking contest proves ...

They said the boy was haunted and the townspeople of Lawrence, Kansas, wanted nothing to do with widower Seth Ward or his two children. In 1857, superstitions run high.Left alone to raise Patricia and Peter, Seth has been isolated from his neighbors since the death of his wife from a lingering, malignant disease. Nearly at his wits end, a young woman appears in response to an advertisement for help.Barbara Nelander dared brave the terror of a dead woman's ghost and the haunting of her son because she was not like other women. Born in Nova Scotia, "Nelander," as she was called, had served as...

Leaving Rose Theodore behind in England to serve as his chandler, Captain Rudy Blake returns to war-torn Richmond. Ordering his crew to wait for him aboard his blockage-running ship Reprobate, he travels to Atlanta where he intends to oversee to his wartime enterprises. During the long and uncomfortable train ride, he falls asleep and is transported back in time to relive his experiences of a year ago. In 1862, Atlanta is a rawboned city desiring to become the center of the Confederacy’s manufacturing and transportation. Already having established himself as a speculator and silent ...

WondRous BackdropsSummary They needed a fresh start; of that neither Rudy Blake nor Rose Theodore disagreed. But where to begin? With the ink still wet on her Master’s papers, Captain R. B. Theodore could have chosen to take the Lady Rose back to sea but an undercurrent of doubt troubled her. The Civil War was over, but reconstruction in the South had not gone the way either had hoped. With a Southerner in the White House, there was every reason to believe reunification meant a return to the Old Ways. Slavery was abolished but the hatreds remained. Northern cotton Factors paid little, if ...

“Ask him about John Paul.” If one sentence stuck in Rose Theodore’s mind, that was it. Innocuous by itself, within those five words lay a world of accusation, charged against Captain Blake not only by the speaker, First Officer D’Artagnan, but held in resentment by the entire crew of the Reprobate. Although the un-Civil War had ended and Rudy returned to England, the horrors of his service in the artillery lingered. Professing “not to be the man I was,” Rose is more than willing to give him the time he needed to recover. Not so the federal agents who have swarmed over England ...

The ReproBate Saga“time and tRouBle”RB XVSummary Time and trouble wait for no man. The time had been set for Rudy Blake’s execution and the Federal authorities in charge of the city knew there would be trouble if the hanging did not take place. The provost-marshal, had been given an assignment: find a charge and make it stick. It was finally decided Blake would be tried for his participation in a duel dating back to 1849 when facing a man on the “Field of Honor” was illegal. The trial had been short and to the point. One month from the day Rudy was found guilty, he was to be taken...

What is a dream but a fight against the odds? A struggle to rise above the ordinary and express a creativity that encapsulates the soul. When love is shared, that emotion becomes a dual consciousness. As a small child, Seth Ward had seen a valley filled with wild strawberry plants and imagined that one day he would own that land and cultivate those plants. Growing to adulthood and facing the harsh reality of raising two small children in Bloody Kansas of the 1850's, however, life was reduced to dreary survival and dreams were tucked away into the recesses of yesteryear.When love and ...

thickeR than Blood the ReproBate saga Book IV Rudy and Rose are separated by an ocean and the even wider gulf of the ever-pressing War Between the States but are never far from each other’s thoughts. During his absence, Rose has successfully established herself as Rudy's chancellor, using the Blake House just outside London as her "port" of operations. She has procured war materiel beyond even her wildest dreams and anxiously awaits Rudy's return, only too well aware of the danger he faces bringing his schooner through the Union blockade at Wilmington. The Reprobate's arrival into ...

Daring. Resourceful. Devil-may-care. Moody. Superstitious. Gambler. Confederate blockade-runner. Captain Rudy Blake was many things to many people, but there was one descriptive word upon which they all agreed. Reprobate. Captain Blake not only reveled in the nickname, he had the audacity to name his ship after himself. The Reprobate. Not a smoke-belching steamer but a swift, sleek four-masted schooner capable of outrunning the Federal gunboats and slipping behind those dangerous, ponderous vessels to deliver what the wealthy citizens of Charleston most sought: luxuries. A man who swore ...

“carRying Battlescars” The tall, gaunt man stood at the door and for a moment, Rose Theodore did not recognize him. Then, with a cry of joy tempered by shock she welcomed home her long-lost wayfarer, Rudy Blake. Civil War had done much to Rudy. Gone was the cocksure reprobate, the captain who had dared run the Federal blockade, the businessman who owned Southern railroads and numerous profit-generating enterprises. In his place was a broken man who had gone for a soldier: a man who served his country but not the Cause; an artillerist who had imbibed too many defeats and seen too much ...

“New Beginnings:Book IV Peas in a Pod” Summary How do you put your life together after an unimaginable tragedy? How to rediscover and restructure your identity? How to find purpose out of chaos? Dr. Robert Kamer is forced to face those questions after the devastating events involving his brother at the Kamer/Jackson Institute. Finding no answers at the K/J I, he flees to the one person in the world who can help him. In so doing, he leaves his partner, Dr. Samuel Jackson, behind to face not only his own personal agonies but the suspicion and distrust of the staff he is compelled to ...

It was not the maiden voyage of the intergalactic prototype space vessel, merely a sixty-day test flight. The ship did not even have a name; she was merely called ONE, a designation without dignity. The skeleton crew participating her last “assignment” – that which would precede the actual mission – were derisively referred to as “crash dummies,” meaning they would be expected to step aside when the actual captain and crew assumed their rightful positions for the multi-year mission. Nothing was expected to go wrong. When the unexpected happened – when the ship lost the ability...