The past rarely stays buried. No matter how deeply you bury it.
For James’s entire life, his mother—dangerous, unhinged, and powerfully psychic—has been the monster in the closet, the cruel abuser behind his urge to protect the innocent and helpless. Now she’s back in his life, and James and his friends must help her with a magical heist to steal a powerful artifact.
If he refuses, everything and everyone he cares about is in terrible danger.
But if he goes through with it, he has a lot more than just his life to lose …
It’s James Keeley’s highest-stakes case yet, with his family history about to throw a magical grenade through the life James has built for himself in Grand Bluffs.
Forget knowing when to hold ’em. Knowing when to run is still pretty important, though.
When you’ve got a deck of cards that tilts luck in your favor, you literally can’t lose.
But that doesn’t mean you can win.
James has been hired to find out who’s killing players in the gambling event of the season, a poker tournament that will determine who controls the city’s magical underworld for the next year, in a glamorous underground casino with a rising body count.
Good thing he’s got luck on his side.
But it’s going to take a lot more than that when the killer sets their sights on James and his friends …
This book stands on its own as an urban fantasy murder mystery, but it also continues a subplot thread from the previous book, involving the magic cards that James acquired from his former mentor’s personal effects. The rest of the series is also on Amazon in ebook and print.
Winter: still wintening for all it’s worth. It’s actually snowing today. I was just out putting more seed in the chickadee feeder. Gray jay (a.k.a. camprobber) on the suet block this morning. One of my plans for this summer, now that we no longer have an outside cat and I’m getting into feeding the birds as a hobby, is to redo my backyard for more pretty little bird nooks and feeders and flowers. That’s probably going to be my main garden push this summer … at least if summer ever gets here, which seems unlikely at the rate we’re going. We still have three feet of snow.
Moose: still moosing.
Cow and calf on the hillside behind the house.
They spent a few days hanging around in the general yard/driveway area, including bedding down for a while next to the plow truck.
She’s as tall as the truck! Hi, lady.Guess this is an okay place to nap after all.
Yesterday they browsed slowly down the creek and we spent some time watching the lady moose try to break off a willow that was at least 15 feet tall to eat the pussy willows at its top. Eventually they drifted on and seem to be gone today.
I worked on Keeley #5 edits all this past week and will be finishing revisions this upcoming week (I hope). Kismet, the webcomic, remains on hold for now, as there have been various additional delays with family emergencies and travel and such, but I’m posting some extras to the Patreon to help make up for it, and plan to get back to regular updates in May – after I get back from the first traveling-for-fun vacation I will have taken since 2019. (Planes! Hotels! What even!)
Looking forward to spring, and all the good things that go with it …
Wild Island Horses by Liz Harman – Contemporary beach romance. (Update: this book is not currently available for sale. Please stay tuned for a future re-release.)
Meanwhile, it’s the height of summer in Alaska, with brilliant sunshine, 85F heat, and a glorious abundance of plant and animal life.
One of my pumpkins is starting to ripen!Raspberry season!Beavers working on their dam.
Watching the beavers at the nearby creek build their dam has been one of our most enjoyable activities this summer. We learned that beavers make noises to each other, and got to watch some juvenile beavers grow up! We do have some worries that at least some of them may have fallen victim to predators or trapping, especially since we hadn’t seen any around for a couple of weeks, but there were two out working on the dam today, so maybe they’ve just been working on dam-building upstream or something.
Other summer animal-life highlights include what I can only describe as woodpecker pecking school – with a flock of newly fledged woodpeckers practicing their pecking on the log walls of our house, including pecking so hard they kept falling off – and various other wildlife including porcupines and the first gopher I’ve ever seen here.
You’re very cute, now please leave my garden alone.
We’ve also enjoyed the summer’s lush wildflowers. We’re almost out of the height of wildflower season now; it’s mostly just fireweed at this point, but it’s one of my favorites.
This photo is from a little earlier in the year – it’s more bloomed out now – but continues to be lush and brilliant all around the house.
We’re starting to get into the winding down of summer now. In a month it’ll be autumn already.
